Cream Pure Silk Hand-Knotted Classic Rug

Between eighteen months and two years at the loom, worked by two people side by side. Cream Pure Silk Hand-Knotted Classic Rug — 100% silk, knotted in China at 207 × 303 cm (6'9" × 9'11"), a cream ground carrying a classical medallion and frame drawn in gold, with thirty-six knots in every square centimeter. Silk is what makes the drawing possible. A wool pile cannot hold a line this fine, so the leaves inside the medallion are drawn a knot or two wide and still read as leaves.

01After the color

The ground is cream and the figures are a yellow-gold that changes weight through the day: bright and almost metallic with the sun on it, warm and matte by lamplight, and different again if you walk to the other end of the room and look back along the pile rather than into it.

02From the hand of the weaver

That reversal is the property people buy silk for, and it is why the same rug photographs as two colors. Two weavers work a piece like this together, one on each half, and thirty-six knots per square centimeter is the rate that makes a year and a half of work necessary. China is where silk weaving began and it is still where the finest silk pile is knotted.

03The rule of care

Some honesty about living with it: silk is a delicate surface, cats will find it, and it cannot be cleaned at home — a rug washer who works with silk is the only correct answer. Two pieces exist at this size. 100% pure silk, hand-knotted in China. Thirty-six knots per square centimeter — a 6 × 6 knot spacing. Eighteen months to two years on the loom, worked by two weavers. 207 × 303 cm (6'9" × 9'11") — a full sitting-room size. Cream ground, gold figures, with a central medallion inside a drawn frame. The color reverses depending on which end of the rug you look from. Not a surface for a household with cats. Cleaning by a specialist in silk rugs only. What does a 6 × 6 knot spacing mean on a silk rug? It means six knots across and six down in every centimeter, or thirty-six knots per square centimeter.

04What the yarn is

That density is what allows a curved leaf or a thin stem to be drawn cleanly, and it is also why a rug of this size takes between eighteen months and two years to finish. Can a pure silk rug be cleaned at home? No. Silk loses its sheen with household detergent and mats when it is over-wetted, so a silk rug goes to a washer who handles silk specifically.

05How it is protected

Between washes, a light vacuum in the direction of the pile is all it needs. A rug that took two years will spend its first year looking new, and it is the forty after that it was made for.