Handwoven with the finest materials including wool and silk, a single Persian rug can often take years, and sometimes decades to create.
A high-quality Iranian carpet can cost tens of thousands of dollars, with antique rugs fetching even higher prices. So how are Persian rugs made, and why are they so expensive?
Iranian hand-woven carpet is one of the most expensive interior decoration goods and a symbol of luxury in every home and place because basically, handmade and organic goods are more expensive than machine-made goods, but there are many other reasons for the high price of hand-woven carpets.
Some reasons for overpriced Persian carpets:
Use of organic and expensive raw materials
Organic and natural raw materials are used to produce Iranian handmade carpets. Woolen yarns are spun by hand and are prepared with great effort and skill for carpet weaving. Also, a wide range of colors is dyed with the help of 100% vegetable and organic dyes and dried in the open air. In this way, it can be said that Iranian handmade carpets are made from more expensive raw materials.
On the other hand, it can be said that 100% Iranian silk carpets, which are mostly woven in the cities of Qom and Tabriz, are the most expensive carpets in the world, because only pure silk, which is very expensive, is used in their weaving. Carpets woven from pure silk, which is the most expensive natural fiber, are very delicate and beautiful and can be folded like a light fabric. There are also artists who produce custom carpets using diamond pieces and other precious stones.
A lot of manpower and production time
An authentic Iranian hand-woven carpet, from the time of picking sheep’s wool or harvesting natural silk to hand-spinning and dyeing carpet thread, and of course weaving and finishing the carpet, requires expert and skilled labor, and each hand-woven carpet depends on the size and dimensions, and of course, the number of weavers in those weeks and It takes months. The most important factors that determine the weaving time of a carpet are the size of the carpet, the number of colors and the type of carpet knots, and the type of carpet yarn.
Although carpet weavers generally work in rural and low-income areas, carpet buyers must consider a fair wage for them in line with international standards such as Oeko-Tex. Unfortunately, carpet dealers currently include the high cost of labor costs in the final price of the carpet, but do not take into account the reasonable wage of the weaver.
Each rug is a unique work of art
If you have bought a machine-made carpet, there may be thousands of a copy of it in your city or country, but each hand-woven Persian carpet is a unique work of art spread in your home, and it is so difficult to find a similar example of it in the world. This case is much more special about Iranian Kilim and Gabbaeh, because in the weaving of this type of carpet, the weaver does not have any design plan in front, and the weaver relies on his skills and experience in carpet weaving and the power of his imagination to draw the motifs on the surface of the carpet like a professional painter.
Low and custom production
The size of the world hand-woven carpet market is about 1.3 billion dollars, and the supply of authentic Iranian hand-woven carpets in the market is low, because the weavers do not make the main profit from this business, and the conditions of weaving and preparing carpets are also very difficult, they lose their desire for creating new carpets and designs day by day.
Also, the exclusive distribution channels of Iranian carpet dealers can be considered as another reason for the increase in carpet prices. Usually, the producers of handmade carpets are in rural areas, they are not familiar with the export and sale of carpets, and they have to sell their products through small and local traders to well-known Iranian handmade carpet traders in Germany or America, and in a way, the main traders of Iranian handwoven carpets in Europe and America are the ones who buy the carpet at a cheap price and sell it at their desired price to international buyers. Now we know, Why Persian Rugs Are So Expensive?
Another source: Some reasons that produce Persian rugs therefore overpriced
