White Plain Hand-Knotted Wool Rug

Four thousand grams of yarn to the square meter, an 18 mm pile, and loops big enough to read as stitches rather than knots: a plain white rug, hand-knotted in India from 70% wool and 30% polyester. There is no pattern on it. The white is flecked rather than flat, and ten sizes are made, out to a 100 × 500 cm (3'3" × 16'5") corridor length.

Up close the surface looks knitted. The loops are tied large and stand proud of each other, which is where the resemblance to a heavy wool sweater comes from, and the flecking in the yarn keeps the white from going clinical. It settles beside oak and it settles beside black steel, and in a room of pale walls it does the work a texture is supposed to do — it gives the eye somewhere to rest without giving it anything to read.

Made entirely by hand in India. The fiber is stated as it is: seven parts wool to three parts polyester, the polyester there to keep the loops from crushing. At 18 mm this is a deep rug, and depth has consequences. A door will not clear it, crumbs disappear into it and stay there, and we would not put it in a kitchen or under a dining table. Underfoot in a bedroom it is the best thing in the house.

• Hand-knotted in India, loop by loop.
• 70% wool and 30% polyester.
• 4,000 g/m² and an 18 mm pile — heavy, thick and firm to stand on.
• Flecked white, no pattern, with the texture doing all of the work.
• Ten sizes, including 80 × 300, 100 × 400 and 100 × 500 cm runners.
• Too deep for a doorway and too open for a kitchen floor.
• Professional washing; a pile this deep holds water at home.

Rugs like this flatten where the traffic goes and stay tall everywhere else, and after a few years that map of the room is the most interesting thing about it.