Gray Vintage-Pattern Handwoven Wool Rug, Ayan Series

Gray Vintage-Pattern Handwoven Wool Rug, Ayan Series — a gray field carrying a classical pattern drawn as though it had already faded once, 243 × 298 cm (8'0" × 9'9"), hand-knotted in Pakistan, wool above cotton.

01Color, by the light

Ayan designs are woven once and never repeated, so this drawing exists in this coloring alone. Gray is the hardest ground to make a classical pattern work on, because the drawing loses the contrast that red or navy would hand it for nothing.

02Knot by knot, by hand

What the series does instead is dye the yarn in small lots, so a single nominal gray arrives at the loom in four or five strengths and the field bands faintly as the weaver works through the skeins. Rug people call that abrash. It is what keeps eight square meters of gray from going dead, and it is why the rug looks lived with before anybody has lived with it. Every knot is the symmetrical Gördes knot, wrapped round two warp threads and cut so that both ends are anchored — slower to tie than the alternative and much harder to work loose under a chair leg.

03From ground to pile

Wool takes the pile and cotton holds the warp and weft, which is why eight square meters of it does not go out of true. This is a rug for a whole room rather than a corner of one, and getting it flat needs a second pair of hands.

04Coming off the loom

A rug specialist should do the washing. Hand-knotted in Pakistan on the symmetrical Gördes knot. Wool pile, cotton warp and weft. Gray ground with softened classical drawing over it. Yarn dyed in small lots, so one gray arrives in several strengths and the field bands. 243 × 298 cm (8'0" × 9'9"), about eight square meters. Eight square meters of dense wool; a second person is needed to lay it. No Ayan design is rewoven after it sells. Washing by a rug specialist. Gray floors usually go quiet after a year in a room, and the banding in this one is what stops that happening.