Red and Green Mamluk Loom-Woven Tencel Rug, Zade Series

A star sits at the center, and a geometric order widens out from it: Mamluk drawing, redrawn for this house and loom-woven in Kütahya. Red and Green Mamluk Loom-Woven Tencel Rug, Zade Series — Tencel® on cotton, with no wool at all.

01Choosing the size

Its dimensions are 200 × 290 cm (6'7" × 9'6"). There is one of it. Green holds the ground and gives the rug its weight; red and earth tones move through it and keep the whole from going solemn.

02The mark of slow weaving

The Mamluk star is a form from the Cairo workshops of the late Middle Ages, and it works here as it always has, by making the eye look for a center and then rewarding it. Colors shift as the light does, brighter across the pile and softer against it.

03How it feels underfoot

A tree of life is worked in as well, and that mark is what says the design belongs to Halıcızade. Tencel® is lyocell, spun from wood pulp; the fiber produces the natural luster, and it explains why the surface reads bright at one angle and matt at another. Cotton forms the base.

04From the hand of the weaver

On the Kütahya looms the knots are tied by the loom and the finishing by hand, which is the definition of loom-woven; the result still carries some of the hand of a knotted piece. Once the weaving is finished each rug travels to a village household nearby, where a woman knots its fringes one by one. The pile is short and gives off very little. Loom-woven in Kütahya — machine knots, hand finishing. Tencel® on a cotton foundation, with no wool in it. Mamluk composition: a central star inside a widening geometric order. Green ground with red and earth tones running through it. Designed for Halıcızade alone and marked with the tree of life. Fringes knotted by hand in the villages around the workshop. 200 × 290 cm (6'7" × 9'6") — a sitting room, an entrance hall or a lobby. Washing belongs to a professional. What is Tencel®, and why put it in a rug? Tencel® is Lenzing's brand of lyocell, a fiber spun from wood pulp.

05Color, by the light

In a pile it gives a soft hand and a natural luster that changes with the direction of the light, and it takes saturated dye colors without flattening them. This rug contains no wool. What is a Mamluk pattern? Mamluk weaving belongs to Cairo in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and its signature is a central star ringed by concentric geometry in a small number of saturated colors. This piece takes the arrangement and reworks it in green, red and earth tones. It sits well in a room of wood tones, and it will still be worth looking at long after the furniture standing on it has moved on.