What is abrash?

What abrash means

Abrash is the change in shade you often see within one color of a handmade rug. A red field may turn a little lighter or darker partway up the rug, or a blue may move from deep to soft and back again. The word comes from Turkish and Arabic and is usually translated as dappled or mottled.

Collectors and weavers treat abrash as a normal feature of handmade rugs. Many people like it because it gives the color depth and movement.

What causes it

Village and tribal weavers dyed their wool in small batches. Each batch took the dye a little differently, because the wool came from different sheep, the dye bath was mixed again, or the water and weather changed. When the weaver ran out of one batch and started the next, the shade shifted.

Natural dyes such as madder and indigo vary more from batch to batch than modern synthetic dyes, so abrash is common in older rugs and in new rugs made with natural dyes. Hand-spun wool also takes dye unevenly, which adds to the effect.

Why it runs across the rug

A hand-knotted rug is woven from the bottom of the loom to the top, one row at a time. A new batch of wool starts at a certain row, so the change shows as a band across the width of the rug.

If a color change follows the shape of a motif instead of running across, the weaver most likely chose it as part of the design.

Abrash, fading or a stain?

Abrash has a clear edge along a row and looks the same on the front and the back. Spread the pile and the color goes all the way down to the knot.

Sun fading is lighter on the front than the back, and the tips of the pile are paler than the base. A stain sits in a patch with no relation to the rows. Our sun fading guide explains how to slow fading.

Does abrash affect value?

Natural abrash does not lower the value of a handmade rug, and in a good antique or village rug it is often seen as a plus. A strong, sudden change in a formal city rug with a fine, even design can be more distracting, and some buyers prefer an even field there.

Some modern workshops add abrash on purpose by mixing dye lots. Done well, it looks natural. Very regular, evenly spaced stripes of color can be a sign that the effect was added for looks.

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