Terracotta Anatolian Handwoven Wool Rug, Obra Series

Root dye first: the terracotta, green and yellow in this Obra Series rug come from plant dyes rather than from a chemical bath, which is why no two areas of the same color sit at exactly the same strength.

01Up close to the pattern

Handwoven from wool on a cotton foundation, in a classical Anatolian drawing with a medallion at the center. The field is Anatolian in the older sense — a medallion held in the middle, motifs stepping outward from it, borders repeating the same forms at a smaller scale.

02Knot by knot, by hand

Root dyeing, kök boya, is the tradition of coloring yarn with madder, indigo and other plant sources, and its signature is a slow drift of tone across a woven field that weavers call abrash. Here the terracotta carries the medallion and the green and yellow work around it, and the drift is most visible where a large area of one color runs unbroken. Wool takes the pile; cotton makes the foundation underneath it. The knots were tied by hand and set close together, which is what gives the rug a soft face and a hard-wearing back at the same time.

03The mark of slow weaving

It was woven in India, in the workshops that keep Anatolian drawing alive outside Anatolia, and it is a single piece rather than one of a run. Because plant dye is not fixed the way industrial dye is, keep it out of long direct sun and have a rug cleaner wash it instead of attempting it at home. Handwoven, wool pile on a cotton foundation. Colored with root dyes — the madder-and-indigo tradition, not synthetic color. Terracotta, green and yellow, with tonal drift across large areas. A classical Anatolian field with a central medallion. Woven in India. Keep it out of prolonged direct sunlight. Washing is for a rug specialist. One piece, in this size and this coloring. What does root-dyed mean on a rug? Root dye, kök boya in Turkish, means the yarn was colored with plant sources such as madder root and indigo instead of synthetic dye.

04Color that shifts through the day

The tones sit slightly unevenly and shift as they age, and that unevenness is how a plant-dyed rug is recognized. Why do the colors change across the field? Weavers call it abrash. Dye lots made from plants never match exactly, so as one batch of yarn runs out and the next begins the tone steps very slightly. On this rug it shows most in the terracotta, and it is a mark of hand production rather than a fault. Plant color goes on moving after the rug is finished, and in twenty years the terracotta will be a quieter version of the color that arrived.