Gray Vintage-Pattern Loom-Woven Tencel Rug, Zade Series

Bünyan is a town outside Kayseri with a rug of its own, and this is that rug brought forward: small floral figures faded into a gray ground, a tree of life in the border ringed by orange and brick marks.

01What Wool does

Gray Vintage-Pattern Loom-Woven Rug, Zade Series: wool, Tencel® and cotton, off the Kütahya looms, at 200 × 290 cm, which is 6'7" by 9'6". The border is where the interest sits. Those orange and brick marks around the tree of life look like the wear on an old kilim, and they are what keep the rug from being merely gray — enough color to give the surface a history, not enough to make it a colored rug. In a minimal living room it settles into the floor; in front of a desk it gives a room that is mostly work something to rest on. The yarn is wool, Tencel® and cotton worked together, which is why the surface goes glossy at one angle and matt at another: the Tencel® carries the sheen, the wool the warmth underfoot, the cotton the skeleton.

02At the loom in in Anatolia

Loom-woven puts the ground onto the machine and saves the handwork for the ends; when a piece leaves Kütahya it goes out to women in the region, who close the fringes one by one. A professional wash is the only kind it should be given. Loom-woven in Kütahya, hand finishing on a machine-laid ground. Wool, Tencel® and cotton. Small faded flowers over gray, drawn from the Bünyan pattern of Anatolia. Tree of life in the border, surrounded by orange and brick marks. One size only: 200 by 290 centimeters. Goes glossy or matt depending where the light and the viewer are. The Tencel® gives the sheen, the wool the warmth underfoot. Professional washing. This is the calmest thing in a series that started with somebody in the design room saying they ought to try new drawings and new colors.