Beige Damask Patchwork Cowhide Rug

The skins for this one were chosen from the pale end of the pile. A beige patchwork cowhide rug laid out in a damask arrangement, 89 × 150 cm (2'11" × 4'11"), pieced from South American cattle hide.

01Color that shifts through the day

Beige and brown throughout, with no dark panel anywhere in it, and it exists once. Pale hide gives away more than dark hide does. On a black skin the hair grain hides itself; on beige you can see the whorls, the change of direction at a shoulder, the faint striping where the coat lay differently.

02Reading the motif

The damask scroll is drawn by setting light panels against slightly warmer ones, so the pattern registers as a shift in tone instead of a shift in hue, and it appears and recedes as the light in the room moves across the day. Hide, cut with shears, sewn edge to edge, and pressed flat.

03From the hand of the weaver

Nothing on this surface is woven, so none of the vocabulary of a rug applies to it: no warp, no knot count, no pile height. What it does have is a hair lie that flattens where people walk, which is how a hide records the traffic through a room.

04Where the Damask comes from

Spills need blotting straight away, because beige forgives nothing. South American cowhide in beige and brown, joined into a rectangle. Damask arrangement drawn by tone rather than by contrast. 89 × 150 cm (2'11" × 4'11"), a small format for a chair or a bedside. The grain and whorls of the coat stay visible on pale hide. Dry cleaning; blot spills rather than washing them out. Pale hide marks more readily than dark hide, and that is worth knowing first. One arrangement, from skins that came together once. Put it on a dark timber floor and the tone reverses: the rug becomes the light thing in the room rather than the pattern in it.