Carpets that still fly

Matin Zamani displays his collection of handmade Persian rugs at Beijing's Four Seasons hotel. [Photo by Feng Yongbin/China Daily]

Swirls of electric blue leap off the finely knotted silk, affirming that the intricate design was handcrafted in Esfahan, Iran.

Indigo, a plant extract, produces the distinctive color today as it has for Persian weavers for centuries, while another vegetable dye, saffron, delivers an equally powerful golden yellow to the door-sized carpet that hangs in front of Matin Zamani.

As a passer-by caresses the rug displayed in the lobby of a Beijing hotel, the soft-spoken Iranian importer smiles and agrees it's a work of art, well worth the 40,000 yuan ($6,150) price tag.

"But these kinds of 'city rugs' are not really my favorites," says Zamani, 26.

He prefers the tribal pieces－preferably from tiny Baluchi or Kurdish villages－that weavers create extemporaneously instead of from a pattern.

His own family comes from the ancient city of Tabriz, where "at least one in every four people is in the rug business", says Zamani.

His grandfather made money in commercial carpets, but was always on the lookout for handmade artisan rugs and he amassed a huge collection, "like 10,000 of them, mostly bought in small places".