Carpet Wall Art
Persian Rugs as Wall Art
Hanging a carpet is not a modern invention — fine silk pieces have been displayed on walls in Iran and Turkey for centuries, for the practical reason that a rug too fine to walk on should not be walked on. A silk Qom of 800 knots per square inch belongs at eye level where the detail can actually be seen.
What works on a wall
Pictorial rugs are the obvious candidates — hunting scenes, garden designs, portraits, calligraphic panels. Fine silk pieces work because the light shift is far more dramatic when you can see the whole surface at once. Small, exceptionally fine rugs that would be lost on a floor make excellent wall pieces. Kilims hang well too, and their light weight makes mounting simpler.
How to hang one properly
Never drive nails or hooks through a carpet. The correct method is a fabric sleeve hand-sewn to a linen strip along the back of the top edge, with a wooden batten slid through it and mounted to the wall. This spreads the weight along the entire edge instead of concentrating it at a few points. We arrange this for customers, and it is worth doing properly — a heavy rug hung from three hooks will distort within a year.
Keep the piece out of direct sunlight, and take it down and rotate it end for end once a year so the fibres relax evenly.
