Multicolor Mamluk-Pattern Hand-Knotted Wool Rug

The eight-pointed star at the middle of this rug is the Mamluk star, the figure at the heart of the rugs made in Cairo for the Mamluk sultanate through the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Multicolor Mamluk-Pattern Hand-Knotted Wool Rug, 198 × 304 cm (6'6" × 10'0"), a wool pile over a cotton foundation, knotted in Afghanistan. Around the star the field is worked in deep green, brick red, gold-yellow and navy, arranged symmetrically so the composition reads outward from the middle in every direction.

01The tone of the ground

None of the four colors takes over; they hold one another in balance, which is what the Mamluk drawing was designed to do. In a room with dark walnut, a leather chair and heavy curtains it supplies the floor those things assume.

02The mark of slow weaving

In a plainer room it becomes the only source of color. It is knotted by hand in Afghanistan using the double knot, which produces a rug that survives generations of use rather than years of it.

03How it feels underfoot

Wool makes the pile and cotton the foundation beneath it. The color range is what gives it away as a serious piece — that many strong tones can only be held together by dyeing done properly, and by a weaver who has done it before.

04What it sits well with

Washing goes to a professional, and to nobody else. Knotted by hand in Afghanistan, each knot doubled. A wool pile carried on a cotton foundation. 198 × 304 cm (6'6" × 10'0") — a living room or a library floor. A Mamluk star at the center, held by symmetrical figures around it. Deep green, brick red, gold-yellow and navy, none dominant. The Mamluk drawing comes from Cairo, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Sits naturally with dark walnut and leather. One rug.

05The rule of care

Professional washing only. What is a Mamluk rug? Mamluk rugs are the rugs produced in Cairo during the Mamluk sultanate, across the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. They are built around a large central star set inside concentric geometric compartments, in a narrow range of strong colors, and the drawing has been rewoven across the rug-making world ever since. Was this rug woven in Egypt? No.

06Knot by knot, by hand

The pattern is Mamluk and the weaving is Afghan: it was knotted by hand in Afghanistan, doubling every knot, in wool on a cotton foundation. What is Egyptian here is the drawing, which is one of the most copied compositions in the history of rug design. Five hundred years is a long time for a drawing to stay in use, and the reason for it is visible on the floor.