Carpet #1

Carpet #3
Purple Qom with silk pile, Kazmi signature. Approx. 5.5 ft. x 3.5 ft. KPSI ~900. The smallest, but undoubtedly the best, among the three. I don’t know if a carpet of this quality can be made in Pakistan.

1. persian nain, good quality but not superb, not habibain (fake signature)

2. chinese copy of hereke rug. So called 300 line double knot quality, probably chenping production (henan, china). Good rug but no original

3. top quality qum rug, very nice and unusal piece.

Where did you buy? Jersualem, Istanbul, Dubai?

The shop value in US dollars:
Nain from 9000 to 12000
Chinese silk 7000 to 9000 not too sure this one in terms of price
The Persian silk 7000 to 9000

The first and biggest give away is the signature, which is done very poorly and makes it clear that it is not Persian. In design it has Persian characteristics mixed with Turkish ones . The knotting is certainly not Qum. You should really compare it with Qum that you have. There should be a difference in the density and weight of pieces as well and of course experience.

It looks like a 6laa but the easy way to find out is to untwist one of the fringes and if it has 6 strands then it is 6 lava and so on.
Nothing fake can add to value unless you want to pass it on as new. At the end of the day it is a nice piece. Personally if there were two pieces the same and one had no signature and the other a fake one I would go for the the one with no signature but that is only personal, as I don't like fakes.

I've been talking to my carpet dealer, who keeps insisting that the Nain is a real Habibian.

The more I look at the signature, the more I'm beginning to think that maybe the signature is real, after all. Reasons:
1) The beige background color matches that of the carpet border.
2) The white and blue lines on the signature match the design of the carpet
3) The overall carpet quality & workmanship are good and worthy of a real Habibian carpet
4) This website has examples of real vs. fake Habibian signatures. The signature on my carpet looks much like the real signature: http://www.oldcarpet.com/habibian.htm


Hmmhh... are you guys sure that the signature is fake?

The dealer also said the Nain was designed by Josha Khan (spell?). Does this mean anything?

1. there are many out there who talk about habibian but have never seen a real habibain in their life in person. Sorry, the signature is fake. Your rug is a good quality 6la rug, but far away of what habibian made. Consider how long habibian is dead now and your rug is brand new.

2. of course your dealer keeps telling it is real habibian, otherwise he would tell you he didn't tell the truth at first. 99% of all sold habinain are fake.

3. he told you your chinese 300 line was a qum - also lying.

4. your nain was not designed by Josha Khan, it is a joshagan design

http://www.persiancarpet...e_To_Josheghan_Rugs.htm

This design is common in nain. Josheghan or MeyMeh rugs are made close to Nain and so this design is also popular in nain.

The Problem is:
Ask 10 Dealers and you get 10 different answer. It will depent about how deep each dealer is into the matter. Some Dealers are great in caucasian antique rugs, other in turkman, other perisan tribal, other fine persian. It all depends on experience, there is no book in which you can learn about it. All written is only a glance of knowlege that comes from dealing with rugs for decades every day.

The rug you refer to in your last post is no habibian in my opinion (even if it thought to be). It is also not made by any son, doughter or whom ever from the habibain family. At the end of the day you have to look at the object and find the clear and actually esay to see things that tell you if a signature was added or not, everything else is pure speculation.

I took the picture from the referred post and added a few things to it that will help you see what I mean.

1. Check the brown color at the arrow marked area. Why should anybody use different browns in the same design? The more rust brown is only used in the signature. If it was made in one weaving process it would be the same color.

2. Look at the vertical lines I added to the Picture. On the left side the knots lay straight to the line outside the signature but make a curve in the signature. On the right the knots are straight to the vertical line all the way. Adding or reweaving sets preasure to the foundation and this is a typical thing.

3. the light blue surrounding the writing is not anywhere else in the design.

Look at your rug, the light blue in the signature is different (lighter) from the rest also.

Finally - you are right giving not too much about the signature. Your rug is a pretty good real Nain (no copy from Naishapour) with fine wool and real silk. It has a nice design and you will enjoy the rug for a Long time.