Gray Striped Loom-Woven Wool and Tencel Rug, Zima Series

Thin orange veins branch across a striped ground of gray and mink, as though a stone slab had been mended with gold: a loom-woven wool and Tencel® rug in the Zima series, cotton beneath, 200 × 300 cm (6'7" × 9'10"), from workshops in Kütahya and Uşak. The stripes are not drawn so much as poured, running the length of the rug in gray and mink, and the orange arrives over them at an entirely different angle: fine, forked, unhurried, more like something that happened to the surface than something planned onto it.

Flow rather than arrangement is the whole Zima idea. Gray and anthracite furniture keeps the rug calm. Anything copper or brass in the room pulls the orange up out of the floor and the temperature of the whole thing changes. Wool and Tencel® share the pile and cotton holds the foundation.

01The Wool on the surface

The wool is the matt half and the lyocell the bright half, and because the two take dye and light differently the veins look wet against a dry ground even though the surface is level. Weaving happens on looms worked by women in western Türkiye — machine knots and hand work in the same piece, which is the accurate description of the technique and the reason the rug sits where it does between a knotted rug and a machine one. There is wool in the pile.

02What the yarn is

Every rug is numbered. Wool and Tencel® pile over cotton. Gray and mink stripes, crossed by branching orange veins. Loom-woven at Kütahya and Uşak: machine structure, hand finishing. Wool for the matt body, lyocell for the wet look in the veining. The size is 200 × 300 cm, drawn for a large sitting room. Contains wool; not the right rug if you avoid it. Each rug carries its own number and the tree of life the house weaves in. A vacuum for the week, a professional washer for the year. Set it against industrial fittings and it will keep looking like a repaired thing, which is what it was drawn to be.