Sell Your Qum Silk Rug —
Persia's Finest Silk Weave

A Qum silk rug is a fine Persian rug woven in the holy city of Qum, about 90 miles south of Tehran. Qum is a young weaving centre — it began producing rugs only in the 1930s — but within a generation it became Iran's leading source of pure-silk rugs. The finest are woven entirely in silk, with very high knot counts and clear, light-reflecting colour.

What sets Qum apart from Persia's ancient weaving cities is that it has almost no tribal or village tradition behind it. Instead, Qum's workshops set out from the beginning to make refined, commercial pieces of the highest technical quality, drawing designs from across the Persian repertoire — the garden panels of Bakhtiari, the hunting scenes of old Safavid carpets, the mihrab of a prayer rug, and dense mille-fleur fields. The result is a weave defined by fineness and finish rather than regional folk character.

Because silk is expensive and slow to knot, Qum concentrated on smaller formats and on quality over quantity — which is why so many Qums are mats, scatter sizes and prayer rugs rather than large carpets. It is also why the name carries such weight with collectors: a good silk Qum packs an enormous amount of skilled work into a small, luminous object. Qum sits alongside Isfahan and Kashan at the top of the fine Persian city market.

Recognise a genuine Qum by its very fine, even knotting, its luminous silk pile that changes tone as you move around it, and fringes that are a continuation of the rug's own silk warps. Designs are typically formal and detailed — panel gardens, mihrab prayer fields, hunting scenes, pictorials or dense mille-fleur — drawn with a crispness only fine silk allows.

Turn the rug over: a fine Qum shows small, regular knots and a clear rendering of the design on the reverse, and the whole piece feels light and supple in the hand. A few further pointers help confirm origin:

• Sheen: real silk reflects light and appears to shift colour with the viewing angle — the effect wool cannot match.
• Fineness: Qum knot counts are high, often 400–900 knots per square inch, giving pin-sharp detail.
• Design range: Qum borrows widely — garden panels, boteh, tree-of-life, prayer mihrabs and pictorial scenes all appear.
• Format: many genuine Qums are small — mats, scatter sizes and prayer rugs — because silk is costly to knot.

If you would like to confirm origin yourself first, our guide on how to identify a Persian rug walks through the checks — or send photographs and we will confirm it for you.

Many of the best Qum rugs carry a small woven cartouche naming the master weaver or workshop. A genuine, respected signature confirms origin and workshop quality and can add a significant premium over an equivalent unsigned rug. Reading and verifying that signature is a core part of how we value a Qum.

Qum's reputation was built by a handful of celebrated ateliers, and collectors will pay more for a documented master's work. A signature is not a guarantee on its own — it must sit with genuine silk, fine knotting and honest condition — but where all of those align, provenance lifts the value meaningfully. We read the cartouche, weigh it against the rug's actual quality, and remain alert to later or spurious additions so your offer reflects the true piece. For a wider view of how provenance and quality translate into price, see our Persian rug valuation page.

As a broad UK guide, small part-silk Qums sell for around £150–£600, good unsigned silk-on-silk Qums for several hundred to a couple of thousand pounds, and fine signed silk-on-silk pieces from roughly £2,000 upward. Large or exceptional signed silk carpets can reach five figures. Every figure depends on confirming real silk, fineness and condition.

These bands are indicative only. Because material and signature move Qum prices so sharply, two rugs of the same size and design can sit far apart — which is exactly why photographs matter.

Indicative only and not a valuation. For a firm figure, request a free assessment or see how much a Persian rug is worth.