Blue and Orange Sivas Zara Handwoven Wool Rug, Anadolu Şal Series

Şal is the Turkish for shawl, and it is why the series carries that name: the drawing runs in bands, the way pattern runs on woven shawl cloth. Anadolu Şal series, Sivas Zara drawing: a handwoven wool rug measuring 169 × 254 cm (5'7" × 8'4"), made by hand in Anatolia in first-grade wool. One piece.

Blue, orange, green, red and yellow are all present and none of them wins. At 169 × 254 cm there is room for the bands to run their full length, so the pattern reads as movement across a floor rather than as a picture to be viewed from one end. Set against oak and gray upholstery it supplies the single strong color note in an otherwise plain room. Put it somewhere that already has pattern and it will argue.

Women weave these in Anatolia, and a piece this size takes months. The wool is first-grade — a longer, brighter fleece than ordinary rug yarn, which is where the faint sheen comes from — and the colors sit deep in it rather than on top. Hand weaving at this scale is not what it was twenty years ago; there are fewer looms and fewer weavers each year. That is a fact about the trade, not a sales tactic. Have it washed professionally.

• Handwoven in Anatolia by women weavers, over months.
• First-grade wool, with a natural sheen the dye sits inside.
• Sivas Zara motifs, banded across the field rather than centered.
• Blue, orange, green, red and yellow, none dominant.
• 169 × 254 cm (5'7" × 8'4"): a seating group or a dining table sits on it.
• Best in a plain room; it will compete with other pattern.
• Professional washing.

Shawl drawing was made to be worn and to move, and on a floor it keeps some of that restlessness.