Black Karabagh-Pattern Handwoven Wool Cushion Covers, Set of Two

Wool, and nothing else: two handwoven cushion covers made in Karabagh, each 39 × 39 cm (1'3" × 1'3"), carrying the region's stepped geometric ornament on a black ground. They are covers rather than finished cushions, and they are sold as a pair.

On black the ornament reads as light on dark instead of the other way round, and at cushion scale that is the difference between a pattern somebody notices and one they have to go looking for. The drawing is geometric all through — hooked, stepped, built the way a loom builds a shape, with no curve anywhere that has not been assembled out of small straight moves. Two of them together read as a pair of small weavings rather than as soft furnishing, which is the point.

Woven by hand, in wool, in Karabagh itself rather than as a Karabagh design made elsewhere. A square this size is where hand weaving shows most, since the whole ornament has to resolve inside forty centimeters with nothing to cover an error. They should be cleaned professionally and not put through a machine.

• Are handwoven in wool in Karabagh, in the south Caucasus.
• Come as a pair, each measuring 39 × 39 cm.
• Carry the stepped, hooked Karabagh ornament on a black ground.
• Are supplied as covers, without inserts.
• Should be cleaned professionally.

Black is the one ground that lets a Caucasian drawing sit in a modern room without dragging a whole tradition in behind it.