Turquoise Plain Hand-Knotted Wool and Silk Rug, Ayan Series

Nothing is drawn on it. Not one motif: Ayan Series Turquoise Plain Hand-Knotted Rug, wool with silk run right through it, knotted in Pakistan over a cotton foundation, 270 × 360 cm (8'10" × 11'10"), dozens of turquoise tones brushed across a single field.

01A question of size

Made at this size and no other, and made once. What the surface has in place of drawing is depth. The tones shift like water moving over itself, and the angle of the light decides which of them is uppermost: darker and bluer under a north window in the morning, brighter and greener by four in the afternoon.

02From the hand of the weaver

Getting a saturated color to sit this evenly across nearly ten square meters without banding is a dyeing problem before it is a weaving one, and that is where the work in this rug actually went.

03The Wool on the surface

Beside cream upholstery, wooden tables and brass it manages to be the loudest thing in the room and the calmest. Wool gives the body and the matt base; silk is spun through the whole field rather than into a motif, so the shine is a low general one instead of a highlight.

04Knot by knot, by hand

The knot is doubled and set close, and that density is the only thing standing between a plain rug and a permanently rumpled one, since a loose weave keeps every fold it is ever given. One caution before anything else: a field with nothing on it hides nothing either, so a room where things get spilled is the wrong room for it. Professional washing. Hand-knotted in Pakistan in wool and silk, over a cotton foundation. No motif — dozens of turquoise tones brushed across one field. Silk spun through the whole ground, which is why the sheen is even. Doubled, close-set knots — the reason an unpatterned field stays flat. 270 × 360 cm (8'10" × 11'10"), made at this size only. Bluer in morning light, greener by late afternoon. A plain field hides nothing that lands on it. Professional washing. Why does a plain rug cost as much as a patterned one? Because an even field is harder to weave than a busy one.

05From ground to pile

Any variation in the dye lot or in the knot tension shows immediately when there is no pattern to distract from it, so a plain rug at this size demands more control at the dyeing stage and a steadier hand at the loom. What does the silk do in a wool rug? Silk reflects light along the length of the fiber where wool scatters it. Spun through a wool pile it lays a faint continuous sheen over the surface, so the turquoise reads brighter from one side of a room and deeper from the other, while the wool keeps the weight and the durability. Nearly ten square meters of one color is the boldest thing in this catalog and, oddly, the least likely to date.