Cream Frame-Pattern Handwoven Silk and Wool Rug, Nahar Series

Silk in the drawing, wool in the knots — the Nahar Series works two fibers against each other, and this cream rug with a blue frame pattern is a clear case of it. Classical Seljuk motifs run through the field and around the border.

01Knot by knot, by hand

It was knotted by hand, several hundred thousand times, and there is one piece in this coloring. Seljuk drawing is angular where Ottoman drawing is floral, and the motifs here keep that hardness: stars, hooks and interlace rather than vines.

02Color that shifts through the day

Cream carries the field and blue does the framing, the reverse of the usual arrangement, and the reason the rug reads light from across a room. Silk is concentrated in the pattern, so the blue catches light where the cream ground does not, and the frame appears to sit above the field rather than around it. Wool takes the knots and silk takes the drawing.

03How it feels underfoot

That division gives the piece two qualities at once — a wool rug's resistance underfoot and a silk rug's shine in the motifs — and it is the technique the whole series is built on. The knot count runs to several hundred thousand, every one set by hand. Because so much of the surface is pale, it will show a spill more readily than a dark rug would, which is worth knowing before it goes under a dining table.

04Which tone on the ground

Washing: professional, and no shortcuts. Hand-knotted from wool and silk; several hundred thousand knots. Silk concentrated in the motifs, wool through the knotted ground. Cream field with a blue frame, in classical Seljuk motifs. Pale enough to lift a dark room and pale enough to show a spill. Sits with solid wood furniture and with cream, blue and red textiles. Part of the Nahar Series, which is built on the wool-and-silk pairing. Professional cleaning only. One piece in this coloring. The geometry belongs to the thirteenth-century Seljuk rugs found at the Alâeddin Mosque in Konya, and it still looks more modern than most of what came after it.