Red and Cream Oushak-Pattern Handwoven Wool Runner, Mahal Series

Sixty centimeters across and just over two meters long — 60 × 202 cm (2'0" × 6'8") — this is a Mahal series runner in handwoven wool, cream and beige flowers scattered over a red ground, with a traditional Oushak border down both edges.

01Knot by knot, by hand

It was knotted in Pakistan, and it is a single piece. Narrow rugs have to earn their width, and this one does it by keeping the ornament small. The flowers are drawn at a scale that suits a strip of floor, so nothing is cut off by the border and the eye runs the length instead of stopping.

02Color that shifts through the day

Cream does most of the drawing; the red beneath it is uneven on purpose, because the yarn was colored by hand and takes dye at different rates. In places the ground drops to tile and rust, and those patches are what stop a small rug from looking printed. The knot is the double knot the Anatolian weavers use, carried into Pakistan by workshops that learned it there, and it wraps two warps at a time.

03How it feels underfoot

Wool for the pile, cotton for the frame beneath, with a very small share of synthetic yarn in the foundation to hold the shape — stated here because it is true. It is thin enough to sit under a door that opens onto it.

04From the hand of the weaver

Send it out for cleaning rather than washing it at home. Knotted by hand in Pakistan on the Anatolian double knot. Cotton and a small share of synthetic below; wool everywhere above. Cream and beige flower motifs on red, inside a traditional Oushak border. Hand-dyed yarn gives the red its uneven depth. 60 × 202 cm (2'0" × 6'8") — a galley kitchen, a hallway, the side of a bed. Thin enough to clear most interior doors. Cleaning by a rug washer. One only. It is the size of rug that gets bought for one spot and then moved four times, and it survives that.