Cream Frame-Pattern Handwoven Silk and Wool Rug, Hanzâde Series

Flowers dropped thinly across a cream field, as though a wind had carried them in from somewhere and set them down where they fell: a handwoven rug from the Hanzâde Series, 176 × 247 cm (5'9" × 8'1"), made in Türkiye in silk and wool, with a narrow frame drawn around the edge. One piece. Sparseness is the design.

01The origin of the pattern

The flowers are small, widely spaced and unhurried, and the frame that runs around them is fine enough to set a limit without ever competing for attention — it gathers the field rather than enclosing it.

02From ground to pile

Underfoot the rug is light and smooth in a way wool alone does not manage, closer to a length of cloth than to a floor covering, and every time light crosses it the drawing comes up a little and then settles again. Roughly seven parts in ten of this rug are silk. The foundation and the drawn pattern are both silk, which is unusual — foundations are normally cotton — and wool runs through the ground to carry the warmth and the wear.

03Coming off the loom

Months of knotting went into it, and the fringes at both ends were tied one at a time after the weaving finished. A silk-heavy pile shows footmarks and pressure marks more readily than an all-wool one, and it is fair to know that before rather than after.

04Up close to the pattern

Only a specialist should ever wash it. Handwoven in Türkiye in silk and wool; roughly 70% of the rug is silk. Both the foundation and the pattern are silk, with wool through the ground. 176 × 247 cm (5'9" × 8'1") — a small or middling salon, a bedroom, a reading corner. Cream field with sparse, finely drawn flowers and a narrow frame border. Light and smooth underfoot — it handles more like fabric than like a floor covering. Fringes tied individually once the knotting was finished. Silk takes footmarks and pressure marks; a wool pile does not, as readily. Months of hand knotting in a single piece. From the doorway there is almost nothing on it; from a chair there is a garden, which is the whole trick of the series.