Rug Types
Tribal Rugs
Woven by nomadic and village weavers for their own use rather than for sale — Qashqai, Baluch, Kurdish and many others, worked from memory rather than a cartoon.
Identification
How to tell
Irregularity is the signature, not a flaw. Abrash — visible bands where the weaver moved to a new dye lot — is normal and often the most attractive thing about the rug. Sides are frequently not quite parallel.
Method
How we clean tribal rugs
Handspun wool and small-batch natural dye mean dye behaviour varies within a single rug, so testing is done colour by colour rather than once. Washing is gentle and cool; abrash bands are preserved deliberately, since evening them out would erase the rug's history.
Common Damage
What goes wrong
Requests to even out abrash, which we decline on principle, and end-fringe loss from wear, which we rebuild.