Red and Green Sivas Zara Handwoven Wool Rug, Anadolu Şal Series

Months of weaving go into a piece measuring 82 × 133 cm (2'8" × 4'4"), which is the arithmetic of hand work and the reason small rugs like this are becoming rare. This is a red-and-green Sivas Zara wool rug in the Anadolu Şal series, made in Anatolia by hand from first-grade wool, in red, green, yellow, orange, purple and blue.

01Color that shifts through the day

One of one. Six colors in a rug this small ought to be too many. They are not, because the motifs are tiny and the colors are distributed through them rather than blocked into areas — no single color owns a region, so the eye takes the whole as one warm surface and finds the six only on closer inspection.

02Coming off the loom

It is the scale for a doorway, a bedside, the foot of a chair, or a wall. The weaving is Anatolian and centuries old as a practice, and Zara, in Sivas province, is one of the places it survived.

03What Wool does

First-grade wool is used, which shows in the shine now and will show again in how the piece looks after twenty years of being walked on. The palette is not historical: these are modern colors laid on old drawing, and the house is straightforward that this is a contemporary weaving in a traditional idiom.

04Color, by the light

Do not wash it at home. Handwoven in Anatolia by women, over months, in first-grade wool. Red, green, yellow, orange, purple and blue, spread through small motifs. Sivas Zara drawing from Zara, a district of Sivas province. 82 × 133 cm (2'8" × 4'4") — a doorway, a bedside or a wall panel. Modern colors on traditional forms, and stated as such. Wool with a natural shine that survives long wear. Professional washing only. Weaving of this kind is disappearing faster than the patterns are, which is what makes a small piece worth more attention than its size suggests.