Green Oushak Hand-Knotted Silk Rug, Elvan Series

The pile here is silk from end to end, which is uncommon at this size and rarer still in this color: Green Oushak Hand-Knotted Silk Rug, Elvan Series, an emerald ground carrying classical Oushak flowers and medallions in blue, orange, yellow, pink and purple, made by hand in India, 184 × 274 cm (6'0" × 9'0"). One of one.

Silk is what the green is doing. Depending on where the light comes from, the ground travels between a dark emerald and a bright, almost grassy tone, and the same passage will not look the same from the two ends of a room. Fine branch work links the medallions in the arrangement Oushak has used for centuries — one of the most familiar readings of that pattern family, executed in an unfamiliar material. The border keeps the density and the palette of the field, so the composition closes on itself rather than simply stopping. Set among dark green plants and gold-toned objects it deepens; against white walls it is the only decision the room needs.

The fiber is sari silk: short-staple silk drawn from the production of sari cloth, a craft knowledge carried over from weaving rather than invented for rugs. It is light in the hand and throws light back, and because the surface carries nothing else, the brightness is even everywhere instead of collecting only in the pattern. No synthetic yarn is used. Every Elvan rug is put together in its own colorway, and green at this depth in a fully silk Oushak does not come round often. Cleaning is for a specialist.

• The pile is silk throughout — no wool in the surface.
• Knotted by hand in India, over months.
• 184 × 274 cm (6'0" × 9'0") — a hall, a living room, a bedroom or a winter garden.
• Emerald ground with blue, orange, yellow, pink and purple in the Oushak field.
• The green shifts from deep emerald to a bright tone as the light angle changes.
• Sari silk, spun from short-staple fiber left by sari weaving.
• No synthetic yarn in the construction; one colorway, one piece.
• Professional washing.

What is sari silk?

Sari silk is short-staple silk fiber drawn from the production of sari cloth in India. It is spun and knotted like any other silk yarn, and it carries color at a high brightness, which is why the Elvan rugs use it for the passages that have to sing.

Why is a fully silk hand-knotted rug uncommon?

Silk is slower to knot than wool and it shows every irregularity, so fewer workshops take the work on. The number of rugs woven entirely in silk has fallen steadily, which is why surviving examples are valued for the craft in them as much as for the surface.

Green is the color a silk rug is least often dyed, and standing over this one explains why the workshops keep trying.