Brown Striped Handwoven Rush Flatweave Rug, Fuji Series

Stripes, and only stripes: a handwoven rush flatweave in brown, made in India for the Fuji Series, with the drawing kept to plain bands and nothing else on it. The size in stock is 120 × 180 cm — 5'11" long by 3'11" wide — and it is made at 80 × 150 and 170 × 240 as well. Nothing in it is knotted. Brown here is the fiber's own register rather than a decorator's brown — the warm, dry, slightly grayed tone a natural stem fiber gives when it is spun and woven without much interference.

01Knot by knot, by hand

Stripes are the honest pattern on a flatweave, because a band of color is what a loom produces most naturally and every other kind of figure has to be forced onto it. Beside oak or walnut the rug disappears into the floor; beside painted furniture it does the opposite and becomes the texture in the room. Rush is a stem fiber cut on the banks of the Ganges, and the people who work it there call it the golden fiber. Every stage of this rug was done by hand.

02From ground to pile

The stiffness that makes it interesting underfoot is also what makes it fragile: a hard point load — a heel, a castor — cuts the fiber instead of compressing it. Water is the other enemy, so this is a dry-cleaning piece and nothing else.

03Coming off the loom

In return it asks almost nothing week to week, which is a vacuum and a shake outdoors. Handwoven in India as a flatweave, in natural rush fiber. Brown, with plain stripes and no other drawing. Sizes: 80 × 150, 120 × 180 (the size held) and 170 × 240 cm. Stiff underfoot — texture in place of softness. Heels and castors cut this fiber; keep both off it. Dry cleaning only; water is not an option. Suits a bedside, a conservatory, or a hall with light traffic. Every rug in this series asks something of the room it goes in, and what this one asks is that nobody crosses it in a hurry.