Green and Cream Tencel® Prayer Rug, Baş Başa Series

The name is the design. Baş Başa describes a person alone with themselves, with their spirit and with their Creator, and this prayer rug is built to leave nothing else in the frame: green run through with cream and blue in horizontal bands, a single mark where the forehead comes down, 80 × 130 cm (2'7" × 4'3") of Tencel® yarn loom-woven in Anatolia.

Horizontal is the useful direction here. The bands run across the rug rather than along it, so the eye travels the short way and stops, and the cream keeps the green from massing. Blue enters only in thin passages and is easy to miss until the light is low. Nothing on the surface is drawn in outline.

Made from natural yarns with Tencel® in them, which is where the softness comes from — the contact against skin is close to silk rather than to wool, and there is no scratch anywhere on it. Anatolian looms give it a character borrowed from hand-woven rugs without pretending to be one. It stands up to daily use, and with professional cleaning and unhurried handling it stays the rug it was on the first day.

• Loom-woven in Anatolia, in the manner of a hand-woven piece.
• Tencel®-containing natural yarn, silk-like against the skin.
• Green with cream and blue in horizontal bands, and no outlined motif.
• A single mark at the prostration point.
• 80 × 130 cm — the right proportion for one person at prayer.
• The series name means being alone together, and the design follows from it.
• Professional cleaning and regular care keep it in form.

Given as a gift it says something a card cannot, which is why most of these leave the shop wrapped.