Red Medallion Loom-Woven Wool Rug, Tempus Series

Red Medallion Loom-Woven Wool Rug, Tempus Series — a traditional medallion of the old Anatolian kind set at the center of a red field, drawn in navy and blue, with the same two colors carried out to the border.

01At the loom in in Türkiye

The surface is wool throughout, woven on Aegean looms in western Türkiye, at four sizes: 160 × 230 cm (5'3" × 7'7"), 200 × 300 cm, 250 × 350 cm and a 300 × 400 cm (9'10" × 13'1") salon piece. A medallion is the single large figure at the middle of a classical rug, and its job is to organize everything else; the corner pieces are quarters of the same figure, which is how you can tell one was drawn properly. Red carries the heat and the two blues cool it back down — a cold-warm pairing that holds under daylight and under tungsten alike, which is not true of every red.

02Where it is laid

Beside walnut, brass and a dark leather chair the rug reads as inherited. In a white room with steel and glass it reads as the one deliberate thing on the floor. It is not a quiet rug, and anyone who wants a floor to disappear should be looking at a plain one. The pile is wool and nothing else, set on the loom at a middling depth and packed closely, so the rug has the weight of a knotted piece in the hand and the evenness a knotted piece never has.

03A line from the archive

Halıcızade has spent twenty years choosing which patterns to keep in Tempus — a handful out of several hundred, picked rather than accepted. Every piece has the house tree of life worked into it.

04After the color

At the largest size it takes two people to move. Loom-woven on the Aegean side of Türkiye. Wool surface, medium depth, closely packed. A traditional central medallion in navy and blue on a red ground. Bears the Halıcızade tree of life, woven into every piece. Four sizes: 160 × 230 cm, 200 × 300 cm, 250 × 350 cm and the 300 × 400 cm salon piece. Tempus is also made in other patterns and colors. Professional washing; the largest size needs two people to lift. Given a dining room it will outlast the table it sits under.