Navy Çeşm-i Bülbül Hand-Knotted Wool Hereke Rug

Çeşm-i bülbül is the nightingale's eye, and it is one of the drawings Hereke made its own: a hand-knotted wool Hereke rug, 120 × 190 cm (3'11" × 6'3"), navy ground with a dense flower bouquet gathered inside a niche, wool pile over a cotton foundation, signed in the corner. There is one of it.

The bouquet sits inside a mihrab-shaped niche rather than a medallion, which is unusual in a rug this size, and cream is used to balance it — enough of it to stop the flowers from vanishing into the dark. Around that runs a wide burgundy border, and inside the border are rows of running-water bands and small medallions repeating one after another, so the frame has as many layers as the field does. The deep navy is the color Hereke is known by; under lamplight it goes almost to black, and the burgundy is what tells you where the border begins.

A cotton foundation with a wool ground knotted over it, and the word "Hereke" worked into a corner, which is the mark that separates a real one from the many rugs that borrow the name. Sümerbank yarn. It took about a year to finish, and every hand on it was a woman's. Original Hereke rugs are harder to find each year — not a sales point, just what has happened to the trade. Have it washed professionally, and not often.

• Hand-knotted in Türkiye: a wool pile on a cotton foundation, in Sümerbank yarn.
• "Hereke" is knotted into the corner as the proof of origin.
• The Çeşm-i Bülbül drawing — a flower bouquet held inside a mihrab-shaped niche.
• Navy ground, cream through the flowers, a wide burgundy border with running-water bands.
• 120 × 190 cm (3'11" × 6'3") — an entrance, a salon doorway, the front of a bed.
• Roughly a year at the loom, worked entirely by women.
• Genuine Hereke rugs are getting scarcer year on year.
• One piece, and no second one to follow.

Under a low lamp the navy closes up and only the burgundy stays visible, which is when the rug looks most like what it is.