Red Oushak Hand-Knotted Wool Rug, Şahzade Series

Red Oushak Hand-Knotted Wool Rug, Şahzade Series — a deep red field carrying classical Oushak drawing in turquoise, navy, mustard, cream and green, hand-knotted in wool over a cotton foundation.

01Reading the motif

Two pieces exist, one at 123 × 184 cm (4'0" × 6'0") and one at 131 × 180 cm (4'4" × 5'11"). Oushak is the English spelling of Uşak, a weaving town in western Türkiye whose patterns have been copied for four hundred years, and the drawing here is the town's own: stylized flowers and long curling branches that keep the eye moving instead of letting it settle. Red is doing the heavy work.

02Which tone on the ground

Against cream, beige, walnut and bare wood the rug holds its temperature; add brass light fittings, linen and something in petrol blue, and it stops looking like a red rug and starts looking like the reason the room was arranged that way. The pile is all wool, tied by hand loop by loop, so no two areas of the field are quite identical — those small drifts in the drawing are how a knotted rug is told from a printed one.

03The Wool on the surface

Under the pile the foundation is largely cotton, with a small proportion of recycled synthetic yarn added to it for tensile strength; we say so rather than calling the whole rug natural. Wool takes dye deeply, which is why the red reads as several different reds according to which side of it the light falls on.

04The tone of the ground

Washing goes out to a specialist. Wool pile, hand-knotted, over a cotton foundation with a little recycled synthetic yarn in it. Classical Oushak drawing: stylized flowers and long curving branches. Turquoise, navy, mustard, cream and green on a deep red ground. Two separate pieces, at 123 × 184 cm and at 131 × 180 cm. Small irregularities across the field, which is what hand knotting looks like. Suits classic, eclectic and traditional rooms; brass and petrol blue set it off. Specialist washing. Why is there synthetic yarn in the foundation? The foundation is largely cotton.

05From ground to pile

A small proportion of recycled synthetic yarn goes into it for tensile strength, and it sits under the pile where it is never visible or underfoot. We state it because the surface is entirely wool and the foundation is not, and those are two different facts. What makes a pattern an Oushak pattern? Oushak, or Uşak in Turkish, is a weaving town in western Anatolia with a pattern tradition documented back to the fifteenth century.

06Up close to the pattern

Its drawings favor large stylized flowers, long curving branches and open fields, which is what is on this rug. Red rugs are usually bought to be the loudest thing in a room; this one is quiet enough to be bought for the drawing instead.