Multicolor Pazyryk Handwoven Wool Rug, Şahzade Series

Afghanistan wove this one; the Altai mountains, some two thousand kilometers to the north-east, are where the pattern it follows was dug out of the permafrost. A handwoven wool rug in mixed color, 169 × 244 cm (5'7" × 8'0"), with cotton and a synthetic component declared next to the wool, in the classic reading of the Pazyryk design rather than the ethnic one. A single piece. Two things separate this treatment from the archaeological original.

01Color, by the light

The palette is broader — the buried rug came out of the ice in a narrow range of reds, yellows and blue-greens, while a modern multicolor version spreads much wider — and the proportion is longer, because a living room is not a square.

02The origin of the pattern

What holds constant is the discipline of the design: a repeating field figure inside processional borders, everything on a grid, nothing spreading outward the way a Persian floral does. Made by hand in Afghanistan. Classic is the design word the house applies to this one, and it earns it: the drawing is worked with the borders given their full width instead of being trimmed to leave more field, which is the usual economy.

03From ground to pile

Yarn is wool, cotton and synthetic, printed in full. A rug with a strong border needs a margin of bare floor around it to be seen properly — set it too tight to a wall and the frame stops functioning as a frame. It goes to a specialist to be washed. Handwoven in Afghanistan; wool with cotton and synthetic declared. Pazyryk-derived design in the classic reading — grid field, processional borders. 169 × 244 cm (5'7" × 8'0"), 4.1 square meters. The borders are given full width rather than trimmed for field. Leave bare floor around it; the frame needs the margin to read. Professional washing. One piece. Rugs built on a grid age more gracefully than rugs built on a curve, because a straight line wears evenly and a scroll does not. This rug belongs to the Şahzade Series.