Qom (Ghom) in kork wool on a silk warp

By Hassan Farahani, MMA Last reviewed: 1 November 2026

Updated November 2026 · sources linked

At a glance

Besides the pure silk carpet, the trade offers Qom (Ghom) carpets with a wool pile on a silk foundation, usually called “kork Qom”.
The sources dispute the meaning of “kork”: the Encyclopaedia Iranica describes kork as the downy undercoat of goats from Kerman, dealers as wool from the neck of young sheep.
The Iranica documents that kork was historically also used for fine carpets. An Iranica reference specifically for Qom is lacking.
Dealers give 300 to 600 knots per square inch for kork Qom, that is, about 465,000 to 930,000 knots per m².
A study in Goljaam names a 65-raj carpet with a silk warp and a pile of silk and kork as the leading product of Qom province in 2006/07. Persian sources describe wool first, then silk.

Not every Qom (Ghom, Qum, Kum; Persian قم) is made entirely of silk. A second type combines a silk foundation with a pile of fine wool. The trade calls it “kork Qom”, “kurk” or “kourk”. The word sounds like an established technical term. On closer inspection it means different things in different sources. This article clarifies what is attested and where trade prose and scholarship diverge.

What the trade means by kork Qom

Rugs.net describes the kork Qum as a carpet on a silk foundation with a pile of kork wool. The knot density, it says, is typically 300 to 600 knots per square inch (rugs.net, trade claim). An Australian dealer lists a “Persian Qum Kourk” as a runner of 3.23 × 0.83 m, but gives neither foundation nor density (PCG Australia, trade claim).

Feature	Kork Qom (according to the trade)	Pure silk Qom
Warp	silk	silk
Weft	silk	silk
Pile	fine wool (“kork”)	silk
Fringes	silk	silk
Density (trade claim, KPSI)	300–600	400 to over 1,000
Density converted, knots/m²	approx. 465,000–930,000	approx. 620,000 to over 1.5 million

The conversion follows the formula 1 square inch = 6.4516 cm². Details are given in the article on knot density in Qom carpets.

Examples in the trade: Qom silk rugs at BazarPort (our own shop)

Video from Hassan Farahani’s YouTube channel (Teppichbazar) Playing loads the video from YouTube (Google), which transfers data to Google.

Why wool on silk?

The combination has technical reasons that can be derived from documented material properties. The Wikipedia article on the Persian carpet cites silk warps for their tensile strength (Wikipedia: Persian carpet). A fine warp thread permits dense knotting. A wool pile, by contrast, is more hard-wearing than silk. The same source calls pure silk piles less resistant to mechanical wear. A wool Qom on silk thus combines fine drawing with a pile better suited to the floor. This weighing is an inference from the material properties. No source stating it explicitly for Qom was found.

You may know a related construction from Nain and Isfahan. The English Wikipedia describes Isfahan carpets with a silk or cotton foundation and a pile of high-quality wool that in Iran is called “kork wool” (Wikipedia: Isfahan rug). This statement, however, rests on a dealer’s website. The comparison of the cities is explored in the article Qom, Kashan, Nain or Isfahan?.

What is kork? Three answers

The Encyclopaedia Iranica’s answer

The Iranica devotes an article of its own to the word kork. The historian Rudi Matthee describes kork as soft wool, also called “Kerman wool” (Iranica: Kork). What is meant is the down of the undercoat of goats, which they grow against the winters in the mountains. Shearing takes place in spring. The animals, he says, are Rayen goats from the Kerman region. The Kashmir shawls were originally woven from this fibre. Red was regarded as the best and most expensive colour.

Matthee also documents carpets. The finest carpets, he writes, were likewise made with kork. For this he cites a British report by Preece from the year 1894. In the 20th century, he says, many shawl makers switched to carpets.

The trade’s answer

Dealers consistently describe kork wool as sheep’s wool. Rugs.net calls it the softest and finest wool in Iran, shorn from young sheep in certain highland regions. PCG Australia speaks of wool from the neck and throat area of sheep (PCG Australia). Bizsan describes high-quality wool from the neck of lambs (bizsan.hu). All three statements are trade claims without references.

What the specialist literature says about fine carpet wool

The Iranica section on raw materials does not use the word kork (Iranica, Carpets ii). It does, however, describe regional wool qualities. Khorasan wool, it says, is especially fine. Kerman wool is shorter, springier and lustrous. Wool from Maku, mixed with lamb’s wool (quzem), yields very high-quality yarn for fine carpets. According to Wikipedia, lambswool is wool from the first shearing, at about seven months (Wikipedia: Lambswool).

The sources disagree

The Iranica describes kork as the downy undercoat of goats from Kerman (Iranica: Kork). Dealers describe kork wool as sheep’s wool, from the neck or from young animals (rugs.net; PCG Australia; bizsan.hu). The confusion is old: according to Matthee, Tavernier, in Isfahan, described kork as sheep’s wool as early as 1647, and others adopted this. For you this means: “kork” on a label is a promise of quality by the trade, not a verifiable fibre designation. Whether a pile contains sheep’s wool or goat hair can only be determined in a laboratory.

Kork at the beginning of Qom weaving?

Bizsan claims that the first workshops in Qom used kork wool and only later went over to pure silk (bizsan.hu, trade claim). Rugman tells it differently: silk was at first used as an accent and then increased (rugman.com, trade claim).

Persian sources support the direction of these statements. A company portrait on the carpet portal Carpetour writes that the migrants from Kashan used wool for years, and in some cases kork (carpetour.net, the firm’s own statement). Silk, it says, was gradually added only from about the 1940s. The master Mohammad Jamshidi recalled in 2022 that around 1961 everyone knotted wool; silk was not customary (Hawzah News, oral history). He does not mention kork in this context.

Scholarly evidence comes from a later period. A study in the journal Goljaam names a carpet of 65 raj with a silk warp and a pile of silk and kork (chelleh abrishami, gol abrisham kork) as the leading product of the province for production and export in 2006/07 (Goljaam). With an index of 0.93, the study rates its export competitiveness as good. Kork on silk was thus not a by-product but a core of Qom production. According to the 7-cm definition, 65 raj corresponds to roughly 860,000 knots per m², assuming equal density in both directions.

Floor’s census figures for the Qom region from 1948 to 1966 name no material (Iranica, Carpets xii). That Qom began with wool is therefore an inference from Persian tradition, not a documented finding. The state of research on the early period is summarised in the article Qom carpets: history and origins.

Telling kork Qom and pure silk Qom apart

The fringes are of no help here. They are of silk in both types, because both are knotted on a silk warp. The difference lies in the pile alone.

A secure identification requires a fibre sample. The Canadian Conservation Institute describes the difference under the microscope. Wool has a rough surface of overlapping scales. Cultivated silk appears as a smooth, cylindrical rod (CCI Notes 13/18). The burn test chiefly distinguishes silk from cellulose fibres such as cotton: silk smells of burnt hair, cellulose of paper. The institute recommends confirming every burn test microscopically. How to recognise imitations is explained in the article Recognising fake Qom silk.

Kork Qom on the auction market

In the auction lots from the Dorotheum, Chiswick, Bonhams and Nagel examined for this article, all Qom carpets were described as silk (Dorotheum, 2016; Chiswick, 2026; Bonhams, 2025). No auction lot with a Qom expressly described as “kork” was found in this sample. A price indication for kork Qom is therefore not possible here.

Condition and care

Different rules apply to a wool pile than to silk. Wool is more robust. The silk foundation, however, remains delicate. Christie’s warns that silk becomes brittle and splits after improper drying (Christie’s Collecting Guide). In a kork Qom this concerns the warp and fringes. Washing should therefore be handled as for a pure silk carpet. The basics are set out in the article Caring for silk carpets properly.