Persian Carpet by Mohtashem of Kashan with a Portrait of Nicholas II

Mohtashem was a celebrated weaver who, in the Iranian city of Kashan in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, produced carpets so skilful and of such high quality that his name became a byword for an entire style of Persian carpet, known as Kashan Mohtashem.

Among the characteristic features of this style are a border of tulips and other flowers running round the edge of the carpet, and a high density of between 35 and 60 knots per square centimetre, almost twice that of other traditional carpets. And the older the carpet, the greater its density.

Curiously enough, Mohtashem carpets were made from imported raw material: merino wool, processed to be softer and finer than Iranian carpet wool, of the Manchester grade, was brought from England. But it all ended sadly: with the European financial crisis and the collapse of the stock markets at the beginning of the twentieth century, the world carpet market collapsed too, and the largest British and German carpet manufacturers were forced to wind up their production. The Iranian Shah Reza Pahlavi nationalised the principal Persian carpet companies, and purchases of expensive English wool ceased. Thus an end was put to the history of the Mohtashem Kashan carpets.