An antique Persian Bakhtiari carpet. The distinctly abrashed slate field displays five columns of weeping willow, rosette and palmette cruciform with a back scatter of small dots, a few in white cotton. The red border of connected, rayed octagons is purely Qashqai, and the other borders also have a distinctly Fars tribal style. This mixing of designs does not require an improbable intermarriage scheme, but merely the winds of trade in operation in the Persian rug business.