The price of a hand-knotted rug, and what it pays for

On 5 June 2013, at Sotheby's in New York, a Persian rug from the early seventeenth century, the Clark Sickle-Leaf Carpet, became the most expensive rug ever sold at auction, at more than three times the previous record. The most expensive rugs in the world are old pieces, rare, entered into the history of art. A contemporary hand-knotted rug obeys another logic, but its price breaks down in the same way. It pays first for time: each point is knotted by hand, and a large format requires four to six months of work. It pays for a wool, spun by hand, then some fifteen stages of making and finishing, from washing to stretching on a frame. It pays for the fineness of the design, which requires a finer yarn and more hours. It pays, finally, for the relationship with a workshop able to hold this quality piece after piece. The price is the sum of these decisions.

The most expensive rugs are museum pieces

The Clark Sickle-Leaf Carpet was made in Persia in the early seventeenth century. The previous record already belonged to a Persian rug, sold at Christie's in London in April 2010. These prices reward age, rarity and provenance as much as making. They belong to the art market. These two sales also say something useful to the connoisseur: a knotted rug, well made, can cross the centuries and remain desirable.

Fineness also plays its part. The finer a design, the finer the yarn must be, and the longer the knotting takes. Silk pushes this logic to the extreme: its very fine thread allows details that wool does not, at a price that follows. The artistic director of the house has made a clear choice on this subject: this highly sophisticated segment is not that of Diacasan, which uses silk in touches, blended with wool.

What time pays for

Knotting is the essence of the Oriental rug and the historic heart of the house, which in fact prefers to speak of knotting rather than of “Nepalese rugs”: the technique first, the country second. A hand-knotted rug is made point by point. The artisan knots each strand onto the warp threads, row after row, and the design is born of this repetition. For a large format, allow four to six months of work. The founder sums it up in a sentence, speaking of the knotted rugs of Nepal: “you have to tie a knot every time”. No machine shortens this time without changing the nature of the rug.

This time carries weight on the French market. Asked about the obstacles to buying a knotted rug, Sandrine cites three: the price, the lead time, and rug culture, which not all buyers share. The three hold together. One accepts the price of a knotted rug when one knows what it required.

What the wool pays for

In Nepal, we have Himalayan wool spun by hand. Spun this way, it catches the light differently according to the angle and the hour. The workshops could spin it otherwise; we hold to this spinning because it keeps in the fibre a natural irregularity that mechanisation would erase. The wool is then wound into skeins, then dyed, always by artisanal means.

The choice of wool follows the technique. For our knotted rugs from Nepal, we set aside New Zealand wool: its purity, sought elsewhere, would take from the knotted rug what makes its character. It finds its place, however, in our Indian tufted rugs, where pale colourways and clean ecrus demand a very regular fibre. European wools, worked in our workshops in Italy and France, are of fine quality, but the purity of whites and ecrus there requires constant watch. Each of these choices weighs on the final price, and each can be read in the rug.

The quality of the fibre is paid for, and so is its absence. Sandrine Demas remembers a period when rugs from Turkey were made of what the trade calls dead wools, taken from animals already dead: beautiful at purchase, they turned grey as soon as they met the air, and a year later the colour had died out. They cost less. The difference in price had simply shifted in time.

What the invisible stages pay for

After the loom, the work continues. The rug is washed in tanks, scraped with a scraper, sprayed, turned over, then stretched on a frame that gives it its final shape. These operations remove impurities, set the colour and ensure the rug's bearing over the years. From spinning to finishing, there are some fifteen stages, all done by hand. The detail is told in our article on the journey of a knotted rug, from spinning to finishing.

At home, these stages remain invisible. Their result can be seen: a rug that stays flat, whose colour does not move, and which acquires a patina instead of wearing out.

What the relationship with the workshop pays for

We have worked with our Nepalese workshop for twenty-five years. A relationship of this length is worth more than any certification: it is a guarantee of constancy, from one piece to the next and from one year to the next. In India, the counterpart for tufting has been the same since the founding journey of 2000. In each workshop, the key person is the head of production, and it is with him that the pieces are discussed. Before working with a workshop, the question asked is simple: is it curious, and will we get along? This eye comes from a long apprenticeship, that of Oriental rugs delivered in bulk, to be sorted, identified, read. It is this school that makes it possible to recognise a good workshop in Nepal or India. The discussion concerns the quality of the work, the development, respect for the drawing, rather than the price. This choice often places our rugs a little above those of the market. It is also what allows a workshop to understand an artist's project and hold it from one piece to the next. Our role as publisher, between the artist, the workshop and the material, is described in our article on what a rug publisher is.

Knotted, tufted: two prices, two crafts

Hand-tufting, which we have carried out in India, is also a craft: each rug is made piece by piece, never in series. Its process is quicker, its lead times shorter, and its price reflects this. The rug is not washed at the workshop as the knotted one is, it is stiffer and does not fold: it travels rolled, whereas the knotted rug travels folded. It allows broader collections: it is the commercial backbone of the house, which publishes both techniques with the same standard. The comparison of the two gestures is developed in our article on hand-knotting and hand-tufting, and the house's knotting can be seen in the collection NEPALESE RUGS, hand-knotted in Nepal in Himalayan wool.

Our knotted rugs from Nepal also carry the drawings of our artists. SUR LE FIL translates the engravings of Renaud Allirand; SPATIAL the mineral images of Emmanuel Thibault. For the lover of drawing, this is where the price takes on its meaning: an artist's line held point by point, without approximation, over several months. The page SUR LE FIL, engravings by Renaud Allirand, hand-knotted shows its precision.

The price of a large-format knotted rug follows the same items: its dimensions, the fineness of its design, its wool, the months spent on the loom. It is the consequence of the time one has agreed to give it.

Text written by the house of Diacasan Edition, Parisian publisher of artists' rugs, from interviews conducted with the publisher in spring 2026 on material and craftsmanship, and from the sources cited below, October 2026.

Sources: The Christian Science Monitor, Carpet from 17th century sells at auction (6 June 2013).