Older pieces tend to have a lower knot count than more recent pieces. Jourdan, at 17. The designs of older pieces tend to be less busy and more spaciously organized than more recent pieces. Loges, at 19. A predominance of small ornaments in a Turkoman carpet may indicate a later period, as does the proliferation of the number of guard stripes.
Early pieces have one or, at most, three stripes flanking the main border.
Closely packed guls in the field tend to indicate a later date, though not necessarily so. Closely packed guls in combination with mulitiple elaborate borders are a fairly definite indicator of a late age. In addition, it is rare to find antique Tekke rugs with Tekke main guls that lack horizontal and vertical lines connecting the guls. Those without these lines are almost always 20th century. As for ensis, the array of the candlebra device in the four field panels can provide a clue as to age.