Gray Oushak-Pattern Handwoven Wool Rug, Şahzade Series

Oushak drawing — thin scrolling stems, open flowerheads, everything placed symmetrically — carried here on silver-gray instead of the madder red it usually sits on. Şahzade Series Handwoven Oushak-Pattern Gray Wool Rug, 308 × 386 cm (10'1" × 12'8"), woven in Afghanistan.

01The mark of slow weaving

Oushak, in western Anatolia, has been a weaving town for centuries and gives the pattern family its name. The gray sits at the dark silver end rather than the pale, which changes what the pattern does: on red, Oushak scrollwork reads as ceremony, and on gray it reads as line drawing.

02Reading the motif

The stems and flowers are spaced evenly enough to be followed from one edge of the field to the other, and the color in them stays soft — pastels against the silver rather than anything that fights it.

03From the hand of the weaver

Because the whole rug was knotted by hand, every repeat differs slightly from the last. The surface your foot touches is entirely wool. Below it the foundation is cotton, into which a little recycled synthetic yarn has been spun for strength; the house prints that fact rather than hiding it. The knot is the double one used across Anatolia, wrapped round a pair of warps — slower to tie, harder in its hold, and the reason a rug of this size took months.

04At the loom in in Uşak

Professional washing. Handwoven in Afghanistan, double-knotted throughout. 308 × 386 cm (10'1" × 12'8") — a rug for a large salon, not a sitting room. Wool on top. Cotton below, carrying a trace of recycled synthetic for strength. Oushak drawing: fine stems, flowerheads, symmetrical placement. Dark silver-gray ground with pastel motif colors. Months at the loom, because of the knot used. Very little shedding. Professional washing; a vacuum otherwise. What is an Oushak pattern? Oushak, the English name for Uşak in western Anatolia, has been a weaving center since the fifteenth century.

05The origin of the pattern

Rugs in the Oushak manner use large-scale floral and medallion drawing with thin scrolling stems and a soft palette. The pattern family is named for the town, not for where a given rug was made. What does double-knotted mean? It means each knot is tied symmetrically around two warp threads rather than looped around one.

06Coming off the loom

This is the Gördes knot, used across Anatolia. It takes longer to tie and holds the pile more firmly, which is why double-knotted rugs are slower to weave and slower to wear. Gray takes the age out of a classical pattern without taking the drawing out of it, and that is the whole argument for this rug.