Blue Medallion Hand-Knotted Silk-Blend Rug

It comes out of China, where hundreds of thousands of knots go into a single piece: a hand-knotted rug in silk, viscose and cotton, blue throughout the ground, with medallion figures gathered at the center and cream and red detail in the borders. It is thin, and it lies almost flush with the floor.

The blue is the reason to own it. At the door it is calm and even; walk toward the window and it opens out, sky at one end of the range and something nearer deep ocean at the other. The medallions are drawn in the classical manner — concentric, a little formal, each ring smaller than the last — and the red in the border is the only warm thing on the rug, which is exactly why it is there. Cream keeps the two apart.

Every knot is tied by hand. Silk, viscose and cotton are blended in the yarn, and the mix gives the surface its sheen. That combination gets close to the drawing pure silk allows without being a pure silk rug, and the house would rather say so than let the word silk stand on its own. The pile is very short, so it sheds almost nothing. Wash it professionally and never at home — silk and viscose both lose their hand when they are soaked.

At 88 cm wide it is a runner, and it comes in two lengths: 88 × 310 cm (2'11" × 10'2"), 2.7 m² (29 sq ft), and 88 × 306 cm (2'11" × 10'0"), 2.7 m² (29 sq ft). Lay it down the middle of an entry or a corridor with a hand's width of bare floor on either side, so the cream border reads as an edge instead of disappearing against the baseboard. In a bedroom it belongs alongside the bed, not under it: keep the legs of the frame off the rug and the medallions clear. In a living room, run it along the front of a sofa or between two doorways. A warm white or limestone wall lets the blue stay blue; a cool gray wall pulls it toward the ocean end of its range, and the red in the border starts to do more of the work.

• Hand-knotted in China at hundreds of thousands of knots per piece.
• A blend of silk, viscose and cotton yarns, with a sheen that comes from the mix.
• Blue ground with a classical medallion arrangement and cream and red borders.
• The blue shifts from pale sky to deep ocean depending on where the light comes from.
• 88 × 310 cm (2'11" × 10'2") or 88 × 306 cm (2'11" × 10'0"); 2.7 m² (29 sq ft) each.
• Very thin and low-pile.
• Close to a pure silk rug in drawing, and honest about not being one.
• Professional washing only — soaking ruins the hand of both fibers.

Fine rugs like this are usually kept out of the traffic, and then get moved into it anyway, because they are the only thing in the house that changes color when you walk past.