Gold and Cream Floral Hand-Knotted Wool Rug, Sultan Series

Gold on cream is the oldest combination in Anatolian weaving, and this Sultan-series rug uses it plainly: 172 × 222 cm (5'8" × 7'3"), hand-knotted in Türkiye, a wool ground with silk in the flowers, the motifs drawn from Oushak and worked over the entire field.

Cream and gold sit close enough in value that the pattern has to be carried by texture, and it is — the silk flowers read brighter than the wool around them under any light and duller once the room goes dark. Green comes in through the stems and the outer band. Nothing is drawn large. This is a fine, close pattern that rewards being stood on far more than being looked at from a doorway.

Türkiye, by hand, knots tied close together. What is scarce here is not the design but the thread: the grade of wool and the silk the series uses have both become harder to source, and a workshop keeping to this knot count finishes fewer rugs a year than it once did. The piece goes as easily under a steel-and-glass table as under a carved sideboard, and few classical patterns manage both. Professional cleaning is not optional with silk in the surface.

• Hand-knotted in Türkiye with the knots tied close together.
• Wool ground carrying silk-knotted flowers, so the pattern separates by sheen.
• Cream and gold at close value, with green in the stems and the outer band.
• Fine, small-scale drawing across the whole field.
• 172 × 222 cm (5'8" × 7'3"), the most compact of the room-sized Sultan pieces.
• Suits carved wood and plain steel furniture equally.
• Professional cleaning, because of the silk.

The pattern will still be doing its work in twenty years, and the gold will have gone a half-tone deeper by then.