Burgundy Oushak-Pattern Hand-Knotted Wool Rug

Burgundy over tan, with cream drawing spread right across the field: a hand-knotted wool rug in the Oushak manner, 272 × 367 cm (8'11" × 12'0"). Oushak — Uşak in Turkish — is the weaving district of western Anatolia whose large, openly spaced patterns have been copied for four centuries. This one was tied in India, and there is exactly one.

The pattern is the Oushak kind rather than the Persian one: motifs drawn big, spaced generously, and a border that repeats a simplified version of whatever the field is doing. Burgundy holds the middle and tan carries the edges, while cream runs between them as outline rather than as a color of its own. The surface has a definite sheen that shifts with the pile, so the burgundy goes deep and almost brown from one end of the room and lifts back to red from the other. Underneath, the foundation is Manchester cotton, a cotton yarn with more luster than the standard kind.

It came off an Indian loom, since that is where most Oushak-pattern weaving now happens — production of the pattern in Uşak itself has thinned to very little. The weave is packed tight, and that density is what keeps a field this open from looking thin. One practical thing is worth saying before anything else: 272 × 367 cm is close to nine feet by twelve, so it takes two people to lay it and a specialist to wash it. This is not a rug anyone moves on a whim.

• Hand-knotted in India, in the Oushak pattern of western Anatolia.
• Wool pile, closely packed, on a foundation of Manchester cotton.
• Burgundy field over tan, with the drawing outlined in cream.
• Large motifs widely spaced, in the Oushak manner rather than the Persian one.
• 272 × 367 cm (8'11" × 12'0") — a full living-room size, or a dining room with the chairs pulled out.
• Professional washing only.
• One piece, at these exact dimensions, and no second one behind it.

Under dark walnut it settles and reads brown; in a white room on pale boards the red comes up and takes the whole floor.