Brown Oushak-Pattern Handwoven Wool Runner, Mahal Series

Three meters of it, and barely seventy-five centimeters across: this is a handwoven wool runner in the Mahal series, made in two lengths — 75 × 304 cm (2'6" × 10'0") and 70 × 303 cm (2'4" × 9'11") — with gold and earth-toned Oushak motifs laid over a dark brown ground and a pale, wide border holding them in. Wool surface, cotton foundation, woven in Pakistan.

Oushak is the English form of Uşak, a weaving town in the west of Anatolia, and weavers elsewhere have been copying its drawing for four hundred years. What the copies keep is the curve: stems that bend rather than turn corners, blossoms opened flat. On this brown ground the gold sits close in tone, so the pattern does not shout across the room — it pulls the eye from one end of a corridor to the other, which is the job a runner is actually for. The light border works like a margin on a page and keeps the dark field from swallowing the walls.

It is knotted by hand in Pakistan by weavers working the Anatolian double knot, the symmetrical knot that closes over two warps and holds a straight line better than a single one does. The yarns are dyed by hand before weaving, which is why the gold reads brassy in daylight and almost bronze under a lamp. Underneath, the warp and weft are cotton, stiffened by a small percentage of synthetic yarn — a detail the house prints rather than calling the rug all-natural. The hand is on the firm side — good in a hallway, less inviting underfoot than a thick pile.

• Knotted by hand in Pakistan with the Anatolian double knot.
• Wool surface over a cotton foundation, with a small proportion of synthetic yarn for strength.
• Dark brown ground, gold and earth-toned Oushak motifs, wide pale border.
• Woven in two lengths: 75 × 304 cm (2'6" × 10'0") and 70 × 303 cm (2'4" × 9'11").
• Hand-dyed yarn, so the gold moves between brass and bronze with the light.
• A firm rather than a plush surface, which is what stands up in a passage.
• Send it to a rug washer when it needs a real clean.

Corridors are where rugs get walked on hardest and looked at least, and this one is built for the first and rewards the second.