When you spend real money on a rug, you deserve to know exactly what you are buying. Most rug sellers blur the line between a genuine hand-knotted piece and a machine-made copy, or call a new rug “Persian” because it borrows a Persian pattern. We do the opposite. Honesty is the whole point of Arteverk — it is the one thing a discounter cannot copy, so we put it in writing.
What we guarantee on every piece
- Genuinely hand-knotted means hand-knotted. If a rug is listed as hand-knotted, it was tied knot by knot by hand on a loom — never power-loomed or machine-made. Our small number of machine-made and flat-woven pieces are labeled plainly as what they are and kept in their own clearly marked collections, never mixed in with the hand-knotted gallery.
- One of one. Every hand-knotted Arteverk rug is the only one of its kind. When it sells, it is gone — there is no “second one in the back.”
- Honest provenance. We describe where a rug was actually made, not just the tradition its pattern comes from. A pattern name (Heriz, Tabriz, Oushak, Kazak) describes a design lineage; it is not a claim about the country of origin. A new rug hand-knotted in Pakistan in a Persian style is described as exactly that — not sold to you as an antique Persian piece.
- Genuine vintage and antiques are genuinely old. When we call a rug vintage, antique, or a masterpiece, it really is — overwhelmingly genuine Persian pieces (woven in Iran), curated from private collections and trusted sources over three generations.
- Materials as described. Wool is wool; wool and silk is wool and silk. We don’t pass off viscose or “bamboo silk” as the real thing.
- Inspected before it ships. Before a rug earns a place in the collection, our team judges the wool, the dyes and the knots by hand. Should a piece ever need it, we also offer professional cleaning, repair and restoration by hand.
Who stands behind it
Arteverk is the Malik family — third generation in rugs since 1970, from Abdul Majeed Malik to the four brothers who run the house today. For roughly half a century we supplied galleries, retailers, and collectors worldwide as a wholesale house; today we sell that same quality direct to the public, with no middleman in between.
Our role is honest and specific. We make our new hand-knotted lines to antique designs at the family’s own facilities in Lahore, Pakistan — with master Afghan weavers and wool sourced from New Zealand and Saudi Arabia. We curate genuine vintage and antique pieces from around the world, acquired rather than newly made. And we sell and ship every rug from our Houston, Texas base, nationwide. The weaving of our new lines is done by the master artisans who make them — we are honest that we do not tie the knots ourselves. Read our full story.
Your satisfaction is guaranteed too
A rug is a decade-long decision, so we make it low-risk:
- 30 days to be sure. You have 14 days from delivery to start a return and up to 30 days to send the rug back, and we cover return shipping with a prepaid label. See our full return policy.
- See it first. Local to Houston? Walk on any piece in natural light at our showroom before you commit. Visit us.
- Cleaning & restoration when you need it. Should a rug ever need it, we offer professional cleaning, repair and restoration by hand — for the rugs we sell and the ones you already own. Cleaning & restoration.
Questions about a specific piece? Read our FAQ, see the care guide, or email us — we’ll tell you exactly what you’re looking at.