Cream and Purple Oushak-Pattern Hand-Knotted Rug, Safir Series

Oushak is a weaving town in western Anatolia whose big, loose floral drawing has been copied for four hundred years, and this is that drawing carried in cream and purple on a hand-knotted rug from India.

01How it feels underfoot

Wool, cotton and bamboo viscose in the surface, a cotton foundation underneath, and a knot count fine enough to hold the small scrollwork. The largest piece measures 265 × 355 cm (8'8" × 11'8"). Cream holds the ground and the purple does the drawing — palmettes, hooked leaves and a scrolling vine that runs the border without quite repeating.

02From the hand of the weaver

What separates it from a printed version is the relief: after the rug comes off the loom a weaver cuts around every motif with hand shears, dropping the ground a few millimeters so the pattern stands up off it.

03Underfoot

Run a hand across the surface and you can feel where the outline is before you can see it. Bamboo viscose in the motifs takes light the way silk does, which is why the purple reads violet from one end of a room and near-plum from the other. Knotted by hand in India.

04The tone of the ground

The shine that makes the pattern legible also picks up footmarks, and on a cream ground they will show until the pile is brushed back the other way — worth knowing before this goes in a hallway.

05The mark of slow weaving

Seven sizes exist, from a small mat up to the salon piece, and two of them are proper corridor runners rather than rugs cut short. What does carving mean on a hand-knotted rug? Carving is a finishing operation.

06Reading the motif

After weaving, a worker trims the pile along the outline of each motif with hand shears, so the ground sits lower than the pattern. The result is a relief you can feel with a palm, and it is done piece by piece rather than by machine. Does an Oushak-pattern rug have to come from Oushak? No. Oushak names both a town in western Anatolia and the family of large-scale floral and medallion drawings that came out of it from the sixteenth century onward. This rug carries the Oushak pattern and was hand-knotted in India, which the description states rather than hides. Hand-knotted in India, with the pattern carved by hand after weaving. Wool, cotton, bamboo viscose and viscose in the surface, on a cotton foundation. Cream ground with purple palmettes, hooked leaves and a scrolling vine border. Dense knotting, which is what lets the small scrollwork stay readable. Seven sizes from 90 × 150 cm to 265 × 355 cm, including two long runners. The bamboo viscose shines, and shine shows footmarks. Professional washing only. Cream grounds get lighter with washing and purple gets quieter with light, so in twenty years it will be a paler rug than the one that arrives. This rug belongs to the Safir Series.