03 · The land

Where they were woven.

A carpet says where it was made before it says anything else. Everything below is counted from the objects themselves — the dyes each centre reached for, how many named parts they carry, what the volume dates them to. Nothing here is a description.

The widest palette in the collection is Gazakh’s, at 90 distinct dyes across 7 carpets. Grid figures are the resolution each carpet was traced at, not a measurement of its knot density — the objects’ physical dimensions are not recorded here, so there is no knots-per-inch to give.

How many schools there are depends on who is counting. Latif Karimov’s classification, which the Carpet Museum follows, groups Azerbaijani weaving into four types; the state’s own summary lists seven, treating Baku and Absheron as one; the volume these forty-one objects come from is organised into eight, adding Nakhchivan — a tradition whose carpets were long recorded under Tabriz. This site follows its volume, because a record should say what its source says.