Yellow Floral Handwoven Wool Rug, Safir Series

India is where this one was made, in a workshop weaving to the Safir specification: a yellow floral handwoven rug, 90 × 150 cm (2'11" × 4'11"), with wool and bamboo viscose above and cotton below. Small, classical in its drawing.

01Where the Medallion comes from

One of one. Floral and classical: blossoms and leaf forms arranged as a repeating field rather than gathered into a medallion, with the two surface fibers doing separate jobs inside it. Wool holds the ground and keeps its color flat.

02What the yarn is

Bamboo viscose goes into the flowers, where a cellulose fiber spun for shine sends light back and makes them sit slightly proud of everything around them. Walk past and they brighten and dim in turn. Hand weaving in India over a cotton foundation, with the pile divided between the two fibers. The house says bamboo viscose rather than bamboo silk, because it is not silk, and the honest weakness of the fiber is water: viscose loses strength when wet, and a spill left to soak leaves a mark in the pile that will not brush out.

03From ground to pile

Blot rather than rub, and leave any real cleaning to a rug washer. Why is bamboo viscose used alongside wool? The two fibers do different jobs. Wool holds a stable, flat color and takes the wear, while bamboo viscose is spun for shine and goes into the motifs so they catch the light.

04Reading the motif

Using both gives a single rug a matte ground and a lustrous pattern. Is the Safir series name translated into English? No. Series names here are treated as names rather than as words, so Safir is never rendered as Sapphire, in the same way a person's name is not translated when they travel. Handwoven in India to the Safir series specification. Wool and bamboo viscose pile over a cotton foundation. Yellow ground with a repeating classical floral drawing. The flowers are worked in the shinier fiber, so they lift under light. 90 × 150 cm (2'11" × 4'11"): small enough for a bedside, a hall or the foot of a chair. Viscose weakens when wet: blot a spill, never soak it. Professional washing. One piece. At ninety by a hundred and fifty it is not a room's worth of rug.

05Up close to the pattern

It is the one piece of pattern a plain room needs, and it moves when the room changes.