Multicolor Anatolian Loom-Woven Wool Rug, Kadim Series

Some of the patterns in the Kadim series come off rugs painted by Lorenzo Lotto; others come off pieces held in collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This one is a loom-woven wool rug with a large star medallion on a sand ground, brick-orange and green panels around it, and a navy border of cypresses. It is a two-by-three-meter rug, 200 × 300 cm overall, which comes to 6'7" × 9'10". Its star medallion is divided into segments rather than drawn as one shape, and those segments carry the brick and green that the rest of the field mostly withholds.

01Up close to the pattern

Around it the navy border runs a line of small cypress trees alternating with stars, close-set, so the frame reads as a dark band from a distance and only resolves when you stand over it. The wool went through a dyeing process meant to take the newness out of the color: reds dropped back toward rust, greens toward olive, so the piece looks as though it has been in a room for twenty years already. Wool pile on a cotton foundation, made on a loom in Kütahya where machine knots and hand work alternate closely enough that the seam between them is hard to find.

02Knot by knot, by hand

The house calls this loom weaving and not hand-knotting, which is the accurate word for it. The pile is set low, so a chair leg moves over it easily and dust has less to settle into. Have it washed professionally; the fringes in particular do not like a domestic wash. Loom-woven in Kütahya: wool pile on a cotton foundation. A segmented star medallion on a sand field, in brick orange and green. A navy border of alternating cypress trees and stars. The wool is dyed to a deliberately faded, rustic tone rather than a fresh one. Kadim reproduces designs recorded in paintings and in museum collections. 200 × 300 cm (6'7" × 9'10") — a full sitting-room size. Low pile, easy to vacuum and easy to move furniture across. Professional washing. A reproduction is usually worth less than the thing it reproduces; this one is worth having because it does not pretend otherwise.