Green Oushak-Pattern Handwoven Wool Rug, Şahzade Series

Like a piece of classical drawing photographed and then printed one size too large: Green Oushak-Pattern Handwoven Wool Rug, Şahzade Series, 149 × 203 cm (4'11" × 6'8"), knotted by hand in Afghanistan, wool on a structure that is largely cotton.

01Reading the motif

Oushak drawing is scaled up rather than crowded, and on a rug this size that means very few motifs, each of them big. Green under an Oushak pattern is a modern decision. The historical grounds are madder red and ivory, and moving the same stems and flowerheads onto green changes what they do — the drawing stops reading as ceremony and starts reading as line. There is no crowding at this scale, so the eye can follow one stem the whole way across instead of losing it inside a repeat.

02What Wool does

It is the choice for a room that already carries pattern in its curtains. The house is direct about the construction, and it is worth repeating: the pile is wool and only wool, the structure below it is cotton for the most part, and a little recycled synthetic thread goes in with the cotton to hold the tension. Nothing here is called all-natural, because it is not.

03At the loom in in Afghanistan

The knot is symmetrical and doubled, wrapping two warps at a time, slower to work and firmer once it is in. Vacuum it; leave the washing to a specialist. Hand-knotted in Afghanistan on the symmetrical double knot. Wool pile; a mostly cotton structure carrying a little recycled synthetic thread. Green ground carrying large-scale Oushak stems and flowerheads. 149 × 203 cm (4'11" × 6'8") — a bedroom, a study, or a generous entrance. Few motifs, drawn large, so the pattern reads from across a room. Suits a room that already has pattern elsewhere in it. Vacuuming for maintenance, specialist washing for anything more. A single piece. Oushak drawing has survived four hundred years of being redrawn, and being put on green is a mild thing to have happened to it.