I bought a gorgeous looking gabbeh on ebay, which was described as 'vegetable colours'. It is clearly not all vegetable colours.

I have questions about what was done to the rug to make it look like vegetable colours, and how this may affect its value.

(i) almost all the 'hot' orange motives have been carefully tinted with something (not sure what, seems colourfast) on the surface of the rug, to make it look less hot. You can see that on the picture called "tinted and half mottled star"
(ii) there is clearly a hot pink, but very sparcely used, and I saw that on the photos before I bought the rug.
(iii) a number of the other colours have tipfading, but it is very very strange: it is a very regular rough 'mottling', the very top of the pile, and on the same pic you see that sometimes it is only on half of a motive (blue star), no tip-fading on the other half at all. So, I don't know (a) whether the mottled-tipfaded colours are all synthetic, and (b) whether some kind of chemical was used to produce the mottling, or whether this is just the effect of light exposure.

Otherwise the rug is in perfect condition, full soft dense pile. Size is 3'11'x 6'4". It was described as 1950s Gashgai Kashguli Gabbeh. If anyone can tell whether that description is accurate, I'd also be grateful.

(Warp and weft are sheep wool, the warps are undyed, with slight colour variation, the wefts are six different colours, the weaver changed colours every once in a while.)

The rug looks fairly new, and I would guess that it is a Shiraz. The color fading is most likely just a change in the wool used. Maybe the weaver ran out of that particular color? Whether you've been duped or not depends on what you paid for this piece.

As to the colours, they look *exactly* alike on the back and at the bottom end of the pile, just the top of the pile is in some places faded to a light mottle, in other places not at all faded.
So I take it you suggest that there is a change in wool, so that one kind of wool keeps the colour, and the other doesn't keep it well and is prone to fading into this 'mottle'. That would make sense.

Thanks so much. That makes me feel ok about it. You guys are incredibly helpful.

I bought the rug mainly because it has prominent six-pointed stars on it.

I've probably looked at pictures of over 10.000 rugs over time (and, alas, only several hundred actual rugs), and it seems to me that six-pointed stars are as good as universally absent as motive. (With the exception of some producer who markets their new commercially produced traditional persian looking rugs, with Jewish motives discreetly woven in, directly to upper-middle class Jewish Americans, but I don't count those rugs, and then the Bezazel rugs from Jerusalem, first half 20th century, which often are quite beautiful.)

I realize these remarks belongs really in a different category of posts, sorry.

Thanks again.