Ardabil Carpet

The Ardabil Carpets (Ardebil Carpets) are a pair of famous Persian carpets in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. They are examples of Ardabil rugs.

The foundation is of silk with wool pile of a knot density at 300–350 knots per square inch (47–54 knots per cm²). The size of the London carpet is 34 ¹⁄₂ by 17 ¹⁄₂ feet (10.5 m × 5.3 m), which gives it about 26 million knots in total. The carpets have an inscription: a couplet from a ghazal by Persian mythic poet Hafiz Shirazi and a signature. The difference in size between the two lamp motifs flanking the central medallion is now seen as a deliberate use of graphical perspective; when seen from the end with the smaller lamp the two appear the same size.

Completed during the rule of the Safavid Shah Tahmasp I in the mid-16th century, probably in Tabriz, the carpets are considered some of the best of the classical Iranian (Persian) school of carpet creation. They were first placed in a mosque in Ardabil, but they had become heavily worn in Iran and were sold in 1890 to a British carpet broker who restored one of the carpets using the other and then resold the restored one to the Victoria and Albert Museum. William Morris, then an art referee for the V&A, was instrumental in the acquisition.

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