Navy Vintage-Pattern Hand-Knotted Wool Rug, Ayan Series

At 246 × 315 cm (8'1" × 10'4") this is a rug for a room that can take it whole: a navy vintage-pattern rug from the Ayan series, its wool pile knotted by hand over a cotton foundation with the double Gördes knot, the pattern surfacing and receding across a navy ground. One of this design was made. The drawing is not evenly legible, and that is deliberate.

01A line from the archive

In some passages the motifs come up clearly and in others they sink almost into the ground, so the surface reads in layers rather than as a single plane. Navy carries several depths at once here because the yarn was dyed in an unusual way before weaving, putting different strengths of one color into the same pile. Under a lamp it goes nearly black.

02Coming off the loom

In daylight the lighter blues rise back out of it. It was knotted on a cotton warp with wool throughout the pile, using the double knot Turkish weaving calls the Gördes knot, which is symmetrical, closes over a pair of warps, and is slower than the alternative.

03Up close to the pattern

Ayan pieces are made one to a design, so this pattern will not appear again in this color. A rug of these dimensions is heavy and awkward to move, and the room is worth planning before it arrives.

04At the loom in in Anatolia

Vacuum at home, and let a professional workshop do the rest. Hand-knotted with the Gördes knot, the symmetrical knot of Anatolian weaving. Wool pile on a cotton foundation. Several depths of navy sit in the same field, a result of how the yarn was dyed. Only one rug is woven to each Ayan design. 246 × 315 cm (8'1" × 10'4") — a large salon, an office floor or an open reception space. At this weight it is not a rug to move about; decide where it goes first. Vacuuming at home, and washing through a professional. In ten years the pattern will have surfaced further where the traffic runs, which is the part of a rug's life nobody plans and everybody remembers.