Cream Frame-Pattern Hand-Knotted Wool Rug with Viscose

Hand-Knotted Cream Frame-Pattern Classic Wool Rug — 252 × 344 cm (8'3" × 11'3"), wool pile with viscose motifs over a cotton foundation, knotted in India. A frame drawing rather than a scattered one: bordered bands hold the field, and the Oushak flowers inside them have been redrawn in cream, beige, mink and gold-yellow. Where a scattered floral asks you to look everywhere at once, a frame tells you where the rug ends and the room begins, and it is the older of the two ideas.

The bands here are wide and repeat inward in two stages before the field opens. Pastels carry the whole scheme, so the effect at a distance is of one warm surface with a structure just visible in it; up close the flower forms resolve and the viscose in them lifts slightly out of the matt wool.

01At the loom in in India

It goes with cream and coffee furniture almost without thinking about it. Months of knotting went into it, on a cotton foundation strung in India, at a count dense enough for the border to hold a straight line over three and a half meters.

02What the yarn is

Wool is the surface and takes the traffic; the cotton beneath is what keeps a rug this wide from drawing in at the sides; viscose is confined to the motifs. Rotate it end for end once a year if it sits in sun, and give it to a professional wash house rather than trying anything at home. Hand-knotted in India by traditional weavers, over months. Wool surface, viscose in the motifs, cotton warp and weft. 252 × 344 cm (8'3" × 11'3"). Bordered frame drawing, Oushak flowers redrawn in cream, mink, beige and gold-yellow. Dense knotting — the reason the long border lines stay true. Works in both traditional and plainer modern rooms. Turn it once a year if it gets direct sun; wash it professionally. The frame is the part that will still be working twenty years from now, long after the fashion for pale rooms has come and gone.