Blue Karabagh-Pattern Hand-Knotted Wool Rug

Blue Karabagh-Pattern Hand-Knotted Wool Rug: a strong blue ground carrying multicolored flowers with orange leading them, drawn from the rose vocabulary Karabagh weavers have worked for centuries.

01Coming off the loom

Tied knot by knot in Afghanistan, doubled around two warps, wool pile, 170 × 248 cm (5'7" × 8'2"). Halıcızade had the design made for itself, and one piece exists. Karabagh, in the southern Caucasus, draws its roses full-face rather than stylized, closer to a garden border than to a motif, and this design opens those roses out for a knotted pile.

02Which tone on the ground

Orange does most of the talking. Set against blue it stays warm instead of turning acid, and the smaller blossoms in red, cream and a little green fill the space between the large ones so that no part of the field is left plain. Under a filament bulb the ground drops toward indigo and the oranges step forward; in daylight the two settle level with each other. Everything underfoot is wool.

03The Cotton on the surface

Below the surface the structure is cotton, apart from a little recycled synthetic thread twisted in to hold tension, and we would rather say that than call the finished rug natural. Doubling the knot around two warps instead of one is slower by the row and leaves a pile that stands rather than leans, which is why the edges of the flowers stay sharp.

04Knot by knot, by hand

Because the roses were carried in the weaver's memory and not copied from a cartoon, no two of them match exactly. Washing goes to a specialist. Knotted by hand in Afghanistan, every knot doubled over two warps. Wool pile; the base is cotton with a little recycled synthetic thread. Blue ground with Karabagh roses in orange, red, cream and green. 170 × 248 cm (5'7" × 8'2") — a seating group, a study or the foot of a large bed. The blossoms vary from one another; none was copied from a drawing. Designed for Halıcızade and produced only for this house. Specialist washing. What is a Karabagh pattern? Karabagh is a weaving region in the southern Caucasus known for roses and blossoms drawn open and full-face rather than reduced to geometry.

05The mark of slow weaving

That flower vocabulary has been repeated there for centuries in flatweaves and in knotted rugs, and it is what covers the blue ground of this piece. What does a doubled knot do that a single one does not? It carries the pile yarn around two neighboring warp threads instead of one.

06After the color

The pile then sits upright under its own tension, so motif edges hold their line for far longer, and the rug takes considerably more time at the loom for the same area of floor. Blue grounds hold their depth better than red ones do, and in twenty years the oranges will have softened while the ground is still nearly where it started.