Cream and Burgundy Oushak-Pattern Hand-Knotted Silk Rug

A burgundy Seljuk star sits at the middle of this cream silk rug, with gold-yellow spreading out around it and turquoise picked out in the smaller motifs. Hand-knotted in China in 100% silk, 167 × 241 cm (5'6" × 7'11"), in the Oushak tradition of western Anatolia. A single example.

The eight-pointed star is one of the constants of Anatolian art, and it is used here the way a jewel is used in a setting: one dark, saturated form holding a field that would otherwise float. Gold-yellow runs out from it across the cream in thin, sunlit strokes. The turquoise appears only in small quantities, which is how that color has always been used in Anatolian work — enough to cool the reds, never enough to compete with them. Every step changes the sheen, so the star looks lit from one side of the room and inked from the other.

All silk, tied by hand in China over a long production. A silk pile of this fineness is soft and fluid rather than springy: it lies down under a foot and comes back slowly, which is one of the ways a silk rug is identified by touch alone. The Oushak repertoire it draws on comes from the weaving towns of western Anatolia, where the pattern family has been in use since the sixteenth century. Day to day it needs no more than a vacuum. Everything past that goes to a professional washer.

• 100% silk, hand-knotted in China over a long production.
• Cream ground with gold-yellow spreading from a burgundy Seljuk star.
• Turquoise used sparingly through the smaller motifs.
• Oushak drawing, from the weaving towns of western Anatolia.
• 167 × 241 cm (5'6" × 7'11") — the middle of a salon, or a large bedroom.
• Soft and fluid underfoot rather than springy, as a silk pile is.
• Vacuum for daily care; a professional wash for anything more.
• A single piece.

The star is the part that will still be legible in fifty years, long after anyone has stopped noticing the gold.