Purple Striped Hand-Knotted Rug

In daylight the lavenders come forward; by evening the darker purples take over and the whole rug settles a shade deeper. Purple Striped Hand-Knotted Rug — horizontal bands running the width, worked by hand in India in cotton, bamboo viscose, viscose and wool.

01How many centimeters, which room

It is 300 cm long and 200 wide, which is 9'10" × 6'7". The stripes are not drawn as lines but as transitions: each band gives way to the next without an edge, so the whole scale from lavender through lilac to damson is present at once and none of it is a boundary.

02Reading the motif

Horizontal banding gives a room width, and at this size that reads as calm rather than as pattern. Colorful and plain at the same time is a narrow thing to get right, and this is what it looks like from the correct side of the line. The weaving is entirely handwork, carried out in India.

03What Wool does

The plant fibers — cotton, bamboo viscose and viscose — are why the surface is soft, and the wool in it is why the rug will still be the shape it is now in a decade. It is knotted at the ordinary thickness of a rug rather than a decorative one, so it will sit anywhere in a house except the kitchen, which the maker rules out specifically. Professional cleaning is what it asks for. Hand-knotted in India, every stage of it. Plant fibers make the face — cotton with bamboo and ordinary viscose — and wool supplies the wear. Horizontal bands running from lavender through lilac to damson. The color shifts between day and evening light rather than staying put. 300 cm long by 200 wide. Ordinary rug thickness, suited to most rooms in a house. Not for the kitchen, on the maker's own advice. Professional cleaning. Purple is the color most people talk themselves out of, and this is the version that makes the case for it quietly.