Turquoise Oushak-Pattern Hand-Knotted Wool Rug, Şahzade Series

Turquoise is the color, and it is worth saying at once that it leans green: the ground of this Şahzade Oushak-pattern rug sits between the two, nearer a soft sea-green by day and nearer blue under lamps.

01The mark of slow weaving

Knotted by hand in Afghanistan, wool surface, 177 × 234 cm (5'10" × 7'8"). A single rug. Over that ground go the Oushak motifs the series is built on — the western Anatolian vocabulary of open forms and long stems, reduced and regularized so the pattern carries at a distance. The design descends from the Pazyryk rug, the oldest knotted pile ever found, a lineage the Şahzade series states openly and which explains the framed, bordered arrangement rather than an all-over one.

02Coming off the loom

A color this specific rewards a plain room: white walls, oak, one dark chair, and the rug is doing all the work by itself. Afghanistan has been knotting rugs for as long as anywhere on earth, and this one was made there by hand, knot by knot, doubled in the way that gives the series its density.

03What Wool does

The surface is wool with nothing mixed into it. The base is cotton, and a recycled synthetic thread is spun into it in small quantity, which is a fact about the structure and not about the part you walk on. The pile is cropped low and packed close, so the surface stays even and holds very little.

04Color, by the light

Wash it professionally, and only professionally. Hand-knotted in Afghanistan, with every knot doubled. Wool pile; cotton base with recycled synthetic thread spun in for strength. A turquoise ground that leans sea-green by day and blue by lamplight. Oushak motifs in a framed composition descended from the Pazyryk rug. 177 × 234 cm (5'10" × 7'8") — sitting rooms, bedrooms, offices. Low, closely packed pile, easy to vacuum. Professional washing. Turquoise is bought on impulse and lived with for decades, so look at it once in the morning and once at night before deciding.