Above the loom in Julia Maudlin’s photograph, a gridded floral drawing sits where the weaver can see it. The finished pattern is already visible in the knots below, but there is a translation happening between the two. A carpet cartoon is not simply a picture of the rug. It has to tell the weaver which colour belongs at a particular point and where one shape ends and another begins.

A drawing has to become instructions

On a gridded cartoon, a small square can correspond to a knot position. That makes the grid useful, but it does not solve every problem. A painted flower may contain several close shades; its outline may pass through a corner of a square; and the drawing may include marks that help the eye without calling for a knot of that colour. The weaver needs a legible system for separating design, yarn choice and execution.

Carpet designer Abdollah Mirzaei compared two ways that workshops in Isfahan and Tabriz made such plans readable. His study draws on interviews and professional practice in those cities. It describes common approaches in the workshops he studied, not rules that every rug from either city must follow.

When the colour is painted onto the grid

In the Isfahan method Mirzaei describes, the design is mounted in workable sections and its areas are painted in the colours intended for weaving. The grid remains visible through the paint. An experienced painter then marks boundaries at knot scale, often with darker, carefully squared dots. The drawing can be read rather directly: look at the painted field, locate its boundary and follow the chart as the work advances.

This is skilled preparation, not a mechanical transfer. A line that looks graceful on paper can turn jagged in pile if its sequence of knots is poorly resolved. Mirzaei describes protective coatings, carefully prepared pigments and final checks as part of making a working cartoon durable enough for repeated handling. Those details concern the paper plan. They are not evidence that the rug’s wool was dyed with the same mineral pigments used on the drawing.

When a number stands for a yarn shade

Mirzaei’s Tabriz example uses another layer of translation. The cartoon may be shaded to make a flower or leaf read convincingly, while numbered areas refer to a separate card of actual yarn samples. A weaver matches the written number to a yarn on that card. The plan can therefore carry subtle visual modelling without relying on every painted tint to be the final weaving instruction.

The study also distinguishes main dots that guide the woven line from smaller guide marks used to separate nearby shaded areas. Those small marks help the person reading the chart but are not themselves tied as knots. The distinction matters when several close tones meet: a useful mark on the paper does not necessarily become a visible feature in the rug.

Why the difference matters

These systems respond to a practical question: how can a designer’s decisions survive the handoff to another person at the loom? Painting the intended colours directly can make a restricted palette quick to read. Numbered yarn samples can keep many neighbouring shades distinct, even when the drawing uses visual shading to communicate depth. In either case, a skilled weaver still has to interpret the chart and control the material under hand.

Mirzaei links the practices he observed to different design preferences and workshop relationships. That is an explanation of his cases, not a reason to call one city traditional and the other inventive by nature. Both systems require design judgement. Neither can be identified with confidence merely by looking at a finished rug. Workshop methods vary, designs travel, and one carpet can involve several people whose decisions are no longer documented.

The next time you notice a flower with several shades in a hand-knotted rug, look beyond the number of knots. Someone had to decide where each shade should turn, how to make that instruction readable, and how to keep the passage coherent as it moved from a drawing into wool. For a broader account of Tabriz design and weaving, see our Tabriz rug guide.

Source

• Abdollah Mirzaei, “An Explanation Study of the Causes of Difference in Coloring and Dotting Methods of Isfahan and Tabriz Carpet Patterns” (2020).