Cream Bordered Hand-Knotted Wool Round Rug, Safari Series

The border is the argument: a powdery terracotta band with flowers drawn into it in beige and light brown, wrapped around a pale cream field. Cream Bordered Hand-Knotted Wool Round Rug from the Safari series, 195 cm across (6'5"), hand-knotted in wool, bamboo viscose and cotton. One piece, and the series has ended. Inside the band the drawing goes tone on tone — curling motifs in cream on cream, visible only where light rakes across them, so the field looks plain from a chair and patterned from standing height.

01Color that shifts through the day

Every color change is soft. Nothing in the rug meets anything else at a hard edge, and on a circle that matters, because a hard line would fight the shape it is drawn inside. Terracotta with cream is a warm pairing rather than a bright one. Wool, bamboo viscose and cotton are knotted together by hand, which gives a surface that manages to be soft and firm at once: the wool is what you feel, the cotton is what keeps it lying flat.

02Coming off the loom

Safari ran for years as one of the most-asked-for collections in the shop and is no longer woven, so what remains is what remains. A circle wants a round or oval table over it, or nothing at all — a rectangular sofa across a circle rarely looks like a decision.

03What Wool does

Between vacuuming, professional washing. Hand-knotted in wool, bamboo viscose and cotton. A terracotta border carrying flowers in beige and light brown. Tone-on-tone motifs in the cream field, visible only in raking light. 195 cm across (6'5") — a dining circle or a seating corner. Soft to the foot, dense enough to keep its shape. From a series that has finished production; stock is what is left. Vacuum between professional washes. Half-classical patterns age better than fully classical ones, because there is less in them to go out of fashion.