Brown Frame-Pattern Handwoven Wool Rug, Ottoman Series

First-shearing fleece from the high pastures above Erzurum went into this handwoven wool rug from the Ottoman Series, 208 × 291 cm (6'10" × 9'7"), with silk carrying the motifs across a cream and beige field and brown and green worked through the frame border.

01The mark of slow weaving

It was woven in eastern Anatolia, and there is one of it. The drawing is Oushak in origin, the classical repertoire of western Anatolia, and here it is arranged as a plain center inside an active border.

02After the color

Cream and beige hold the field; the colors were brought up with natural root dyes rather than industrial ones, so the palette stays close to what the fleece already was. A thin line of green runs through the cream of the border — a line rather than a band, which keeps the frame from shutting the field in.

03What Wool does

The motifs themselves are silk, and they come forward under lamplight and settle back in daylight. The pile is wool and the motifs are silk; warp, weft and knot are wool throughout the ground.

04Underfoot

The fleece comes from the first shearing, off flocks grazed on the high plateau, where the altitude produces a brighter and softer staple than lowland pasture does. It was tied with the double knot and finished with the grooved technique the eastern workshops used, which raises the density.

05Knot by knot, by hand

About six months at the loom. Weaving of this kind has all but stopped in Erzurum and Diyarbakır, so what exists is what exists. Wool and silk together want careful handling: send it to a rug washer, and keep claws off the pile. Handwoven in eastern Anatolia — Erzurum and Diyarbakır — where this kind of weaving has largely ended. Wool pile with the motifs worked in silk. First-shearing fleece from flocks grazed at altitude. Double-knotted and finished with the grooved technique, which raises the density. About six months at the loom. 208 × 291 cm (6'10" × 9'7") — a full salon size. Natural root dyes: cream and beige in the field, green through the border. Rug washer only, and take care around pets. In ten years the cream will have gone a shade deeper and the silk will still be the first thing the light finds.