Pink Vintage-Pattern Hand-Knotted Wool Rug

This rug was another rug first. Hand-Knotted Vintage-Pattern Pink Wool Rug, 169 × 276 cm (5'7" × 9'1") — an Anatolian hand-knotted piece woven somewhere between thirty and eighty years ago, then shaved down, thinned, dyed again in a strong pink and dried.

01The origin of the pattern

The old floral drawing survives the process and comes up through the new color. Pink at this strength was never in the original. It has been laid over motifs drawn for madder and indigo, and the collision is the point: classical Anatolian flowers in a color no classical weaver would have reached for.

02What the yarn is

Where the old wool took the new dye unevenly the field breaks into lighter and darker passages. Against plain furniture it does all the talking in the room. The process is straightforward and worth understanding.

03The mark of slow weaving

Old handwoven rugs are collected, the pile is clipped short, the body is thinned, the whole piece is over-dyed and then dried. What comes out is thinner than a new rug and, with less pile to soak anything up, less inclined to hold what gets spilled on it. The knots underneath are still the original hand knots. Professional washing. An Anatolian hand-knotted wool rug, originally woven thirty to eighty years ago. Shaved, thinned, over-dyed in pink and dried. 169 × 276 cm (5'7" × 9'1"). Floral Anatolian drawing showing through the new color. Thin, and hard-wearing for its thinness. Less absorbent than a full-pile rug, because there is less pile. Used in living rooms, kitchens, offices and public spaces. Professional washing. What is an overdyed vintage rug? The rug started life as an older hand-knotted piece.

04After the color

Its pile is clipped short, the body is thinned, and then the whole thing goes back through the dye in a single strong color. The drawing underneath stays visible, because old wool and new dye meet unevenly across the field. How old is this rug? The rug it was made from was woven in Anatolia between roughly thirty and eighty years ago.

05Up close to the pattern

In the trade a rug of that age is called vintage, semi-antique runs from fifty to a hundred years, and antique means a hundred or more. No authority issues these labels; they are conventions of use. Somebody knotted this by hand two generations ago and somebody else decided it should be pink, and both decisions are still visible in it.