Navy Hereke-Pattern Machine-Woven Viscose Rug, Efsun Series

The Efsun Series rug puts the classical Hereke drawing — a densely filled field inside a wide, fine border — onto a navy ground, machine-woven in Türkiye in viscose and acrylic. It is a Hereke pattern and not a Hereke rug, and that difference is worth stating before anything else. It is cut in three sizes, and the biggest of them is 240 × 340 cm, 7'10" by 11'2" in imperial.

Hereke is a town on the Gulf of İzmit, east of İstanbul, where an imperial workshop was founded in 1843 to weave for the Ottoman palace. The name now attaches to a drawing as much as to a place: a crowded field, a broad border, and floral work fine enough that it was originally knotted in silk. Reproduced on a machine loom in viscose, that drawing survives the change of scale better than most classical patterns, because it was composed to be read as an overall surface rather than as a set of individual flowers. Navy holds it together — on a lighter ground the density would look like noise.

Acrylic carries the body and viscose carries the pattern, at a hundred reeds, which is the density figure Turkish machine looms are graded by. The result is flat and light, closer in the hand to a woven cloth than to a knotted pile, and it will never do what a hand-knotted Hereke does under a foot. What it will do is put that drawing on a floor at sizes and in rooms where a knotted one would be an unreasonable thing to walk on. Viscose takes a professional wash well, and nothing else is recommended.

• Machine-woven in Türkiye in viscose and acrylic, at a 100-reed density.
• Reproduces the classical Hereke drawing — crowded field, wide fine border — in navy.
• Is a Hereke pattern, not a hand-knotted Hereke rug.
• Lies flat and light, more like a woven cloth than a knotted pile.
• Comes as 160 × 230 cm, as 200 × 290 cm, and as 240 × 340 cm.
• Should be washed professionally.

Is this a real Hereke rug?

No. This is a machine-woven viscose and acrylic rug carrying the Hereke drawing. A hand-knotted Hereke is knotted one knot at a time, usually in silk or fine wool, and takes months or years. Both are legitimate objects; only one of them is a hand-knotted Hereke, and this is not it.

What does 100 reeds mean on a machine-woven rug?

Reed count, or tarak in Turkish, is the density figure Turkish machine looms are graded by: the higher the number, the finer the weave and the more detail the drawing can hold. At 100 reeds this rug is fine enough to carry the small floral work a Hereke pattern depends on.

Palace drawings became public property a long time ago, and there is no dishonor in a floor that borrows one so long as nobody pretends otherwise.