KUBA CARPET

any of several types of antique floor coverings of the Caucasus, many of which are of considerable length, but narrow. Rather than the town of Kuba (now Quba, Azerbaijan), which was founded about 1750 in Dagestan, the original source was probably the districts of Karabakh and Shirvan in Southern Caucasia, where rug workshops were operated under the sponsorship of the Iranian shah 'Abbas I in the early 17th century. The most numerous group of Kuba carpets are the Dragon rugs produced from the 17th into the 19th century. Sunburst carpets accent a motif that has persisted in the recent Eagle Kazaks, together with crude, hooked lancet leaves and egg-shaped palmettes. Other schemes offer variants of Kerman and East Persian designs, each shape having become geometric, with bold draftsmanship and colouring. A later series has a modified Turkish silk pattern, with stylized palmettes in rows, placed between lancet leaves deformed into tree shapes. Kuba carpets normally were made entirely of wool until the 19th century, when cotton was sometimes used for warps or weft, or silk blended into the wool foundation yarns.