Cream Oushak Hand-Knotted Wool Long Runner, Mahal Series

Nearly five meters of it — 78 × 483 cm (2'7" × 15'10") — a length most houses cannot use and a few need badly. This is a Mahal series runner, knotted by hand in wool, cream, with orderly rows of flower motifs and a red border down both sides, made in Pakistan over a cotton foundation. There is one of it at this length.

Over that distance a pattern has to be regular or it falls apart, and the flowers here are set in even rows rather than scattered — the drawing stays legible from either end, and there is no point along the length where it looks like a different rug. Red at the edges does the framing. Cream in the middle keeps a corridor of this length from feeling like a tunnel, and the ivory-to-honey drift across the field is what stops five meters of pale ground from going dead. Green and earth tones appear inside the flowers and nowhere else.

It was woven in Pakistan by weavers holding to the Anatolian double-knot tradition, one knot at a time over nearly five meters. The face is entirely wool, dense enough for a hallway that is used every day; the foundation is cotton, and a modest quantity of synthetic yarn is worked into it, which on a piece this long is what stops it wandering out of true. Yarn colored by hand does not repeat exactly, and on a rug this size that is visible: the cream runs from ivory at one end toward honey at the other. Professional washing, and get help lifting it.

• Knotted by hand in Pakistan in the Anatolian double-knot tradition.
• All-wool face; cotton foundation with a modest synthetic content for stability.
• Cream field, flower motifs in even rows, a red border on both long sides.
• 78 × 483 cm (2'7" × 15'10") — a genuinely long corridor, a foyer, a gallery landing.
• Hand-dyed yarn: the cream drifts from ivory to honey down the length.
• Narrow and dense, which is the right build for constant traffic.
• Rare in the trade: most halls this long are covered with two rugs and a gap.
• Professional washing. One runner.

A hall of that length deserves one continuous piece, and one continuous piece is the hard thing to find.