Bright Yellow Overdyed Hand-Knotted Vintage Wool Rug

Bright Yellow Overdyed Hand-Knotted Vintage Wool Rug — an Anatolian rug of an earlier generation, 154 × 253 cm (5'1" × 8'4"), shaved to a low pile and re-dyed a strong clear yellow, with the fine original drawing still legible under the new color. Wool pile, cotton foundation, one of one.

Where the previous piece in this group went gold, this one went citrus. The yellow is cleaner and colder, closer to the raw dyestuff, and it changes the rug's job: gold flatters a room and this shade interrupts it. The old motifs are fine rather than bold — thin repeating figures rather than large flowers — so at a distance the rug reads as a single sheet of color and only resolves into drawing when you stand over it. That is a fair description of most overdyed rugs and an exact one of this.

Nothing was newly woven to make this. It was knotted by hand in Anatolia years ago, selected out of a much larger pile of old rugs, cut back with shears and put through the dye. The wool takes a second dye unevenly by nature, and that unevenness is the character you are buying. Low pile means it lies flat under a door, weighs little, and gives dust and grit almost nowhere to lodge. It also means you feel the floor through it. Have it washed professionally.

• An old hand-knotted Anatolian rug, shorn and overdyed rather than newly made.
• Wool pile on a cotton foundation.
• Clear yellow, cooler and sharper than the gold-toned pieces in the same group.
• Fine original motifs, visible from close up and lost from across the room.
• 154 × 253 cm (5'1" × 8'4") — a bedroom, a study, a smaller sitting room.
• Very low pile: flat, light, and firm to walk on.
• Uneven dye take is inherent to the process and not a fault.
• Professional washing. A single piece.

It is the rug you buy when the room is finished and something in it has gone quiet.