Red Floral Medallion Power-Loomed Tencel® Rug, Zade Series

Red the way velvet is red, spreading rather than glaring: a Zade piece, its Tencel® and cotton laid down on the loom, with a traditional medallion at the middle, flowers ranked around it, and the house tree-of-life standing in the border. It is made in several sizes. Colors that look faded in shade come back up when daylight reaches them.

The medallion holds the middle and the floral repeat circles it at an even interval, so the field has a pulse to it rather than a grid. In the border the tree-of-life stands in for the usual running vine — a house motif, and the reason this frame does not look like any other classical border. The reds are laid in several close values instead of one flat tone, which is why the surface seems to have aged before it arrived. Under a bulb it goes deep and warm; near a window the lighter reds separate out and the flowers come forward.

Workshops around Oushak run these off on looms, and the finished pieces then travel to nearby households, where the fringe knotting is done by hand and one knot at a time. Tencel® and cotton together give a surface that is cool and slightly silky rather than woolly, and the pile is kept short — less depth for dust to work into and a straightforward vacuum. The Zade designs came out of an idea inside the house: make something with patterns and colors nobody else was putting on a floor. Send it to a wash house when it needs more than a vacuum.

• Power-loomed in the Oushak region; fringes knotted by hand in the villages afterwards.
• Tencel® with cotton; not a thread of wool in the surface.
• Central medallion with a floral repeat, and the house tree-of-life worked into the border.
• Several close values of red rather than one flat color.
• Short pile — smooth underfoot and easy to vacuum.
• Available in more than one size.
• Professional washing for anything beyond routine cleaning.

This is what a room gets when it wants a classical floor without the classical lecture.