Navy Geometric Handwoven Wool Kilim, Studio Potato Bubble Trouble

Studio Potato gives its designs names instead of numbers, and Bubble Trouble is one of them: a handwoven wool kilim in navy, flat and pileless, its drawing geometric and modern rather than inherited from any village.

01The tone of the ground

The 120 × 170 cm (3'11" × 5'7") piece is the one still held. Navy is a hard ground for a flatweave, because there is no pile to hold a shadow — the color arrives flat and stays flat, and the geometry laid across it has to do all the work of depth.

02The mark of slow weaving

The shapes are set against the dark ground as blocks, with the steps and angles that a weft-faced weave forces on any figure it carries. In a room with white walls it reads as a piece of graphic work put on the floor rather than as a rug with a history behind it. Wool throughout, and the weaving was done by hand in Türkiye. A kilim carries no knots at all: its pattern is made where the weft crosses the warp and is beaten tight, until nothing of the warp shows.

That is why the surface is thin, why both faces work, and why you turn it over once one side has had its season of sun. Thin also means hard, so there is nothing underfoot to absorb a step and a pad beneath it is money well spent on stone or boards.

03Which tone on the ground

It was made at 80 × 140 cm and 160 × 210 cm as well; only the middle size remains. Handwoven as a wool kilim in Türkiye, flat, with no pile. Navy ground under a modern geometric drawing by Studio Potato. Held at 120 × 170 cm (3'11" × 5'7"); the 80 × 140 and 160 × 210 sizes are gone. Reversible, and thin enough to slide beneath a door or a low sofa. Hard underfoot on stone or boards, so a pad underneath earns its keep. Washing is for a rug specialist, never a machine. A kilim this graphic will date the way a poster dates, which is to say it will look like the year it was made, and that is not the same as looking old.