Green Oushak-Pattern Loom-Woven Tencel Rug, Zade Series

Hold it at arm's length and the surface goes matt; move a step and parts of it come up with a low shine. This is a Zade-series rug in a ground close to olive, woven on the Kütahya looms in Tencel® and cotton, carrying an Oushak field of faded coral, cinnamon and cream.

01The memory of a region

It starts at 130 × 190 cm and runs through four larger sizes, one of them a 90 × 390 cm runner — 2'11" by 12'10" — for a hall. Oushak is a weaving region in western Anatolia whose drawing has been copied since the sixteenth century, and what the Zade version does with it is to let the motifs come and go.

02Color, by the light

Some pass clearly across the green; others drop back into it and are lost until the light changes. The result is a rhythm rather than a fixed picture, and it is why a classical pattern here does not read as a reproduction of an antique. Coral and cinnamon are warm and the green under them is cool, so the rug reads differently to a north-facing room than to a south-facing one.

03What the yarn is

A small tree of life is set into the border — the mark that says the house wove it. Tencel® and cotton, and no wool anywhere in it. Tencel® is lyocell, a fiber regenerated from wood cellulose, and it is the reason the surface moves between matt and shine; cotton runs the foundation and keeps the rug flat to the floor.

04The mark of slow weaving

The body comes off a loom in Kütahya with machine and hand work in the same piece, and then each rug is carried out to houses in the district, where women knot the fringes one at a time before it comes back. The pile is short, which means it slips under a door and gives off next to no lint. Loom-woven in Kütahya, then fringed by hand in the surrounding villages. Tencel® and cotton; contains no wool. An Oushak field in faded coral, cinnamon and cream on a green close to olive. Matt from one angle and lightly lustrous from another, depending on where you stand. Short pile, low lint, thin enough to clear a door. The Halıcızade tree of life is worked into the border. Five sizes, 130 × 190 cm to 200 × 300 cm, plus a 90 × 390 cm runner. Professional washing. Green floors are rare because green is hard to place; this one is desaturated far enough that it behaves like a neutral and only occasionally remembers it is a color.