Red Oushak-Pattern Hand-Knotted Wool Rug

Red Oushak-pattern hand-knotted wool rug — a bright red field bordered in navy, with thin branches, flower heads and curling stems drawn across it, 197 × 270 cm (6'6" × 8'10"), on a cotton foundation, with a wool pile tied in the double Gördes knot.

01After the color

A single rug. The two colors are doing opposite jobs. Red holds the center and has the warmth of ground that has been standing in the sun; navy runs the borders and pulls the eye back in at the edges. The vine work moves between them, drawn thin enough that it never blocks the ground it sits on. The dyeing is what makes the red worth looking at — the same color turns up at several depths across the field, so the surface carries variation instead of one uniform tone. The Gördes knot is symmetrical and ties over two warps at once, which is why the pile is stiff and why a rug made this way outlasts its owner.

02What Wool does

Wool sits on a cotton foundation and there is nothing else in it. Oushak is the English name for a weaving town in western Anatolia whose medallion and vine drawing has been copied and re-copied for five hundred years, and what is here is a working version of that vocabulary rather than a museum reproduction. Only professional washing is advised. Hand-knotted with the double Gördes knot, the symmetrical Turkish knot. Wool pile on a cotton foundation, with no other fiber in it. A red field bordered in navy, with branch, flower and stem drawing across the ground. The red appears at several depths, a result of how the yarn was dyed. 197 × 270 cm (6'6" × 8'10") — a sitting room, a study or a wide landing. The Oushak vocabulary has been in the trade for five hundred years. Only professional washing is advised. A strong red is never background, and that is either the argument for this rug or the argument against it.