Red Abstract Loom-Woven Tencel Rug, Zima Series

"What a fine thing to come to rest somewhere new each day; finer still to keep going, neither clouding nor freezing." Mevlana's lines were the brief for the Zima Series, and this is the red reading of them: a loom-woven Tencel® rug, strong red gathered around a plain beige center, the drawing moving outward from the middle in a rhythm rather than a repeat. The form has edges but no rules inside them. It is neither symmetrical nor random — the disorder is deliberate and measured, and that is harder to weave than either full symmetry or none.

01Color that shifts through the day

Red wraps the pale beige middle like a frame, but it reads more like a doorway standing open, and the eye keeps going through it. The saturation of that red is held in check by the Tencel® itself, which puts a thin brightness over the color in daylight and takes the heat out of it. Loom-woven, which means machine and hand divide the work: the structure goes down mechanically on the looms in Kütahya and Uşak, and everything after it is finished by hand, largely by women.

02How it feels underfoot

Tencel® is a cellulosic filament, soft and silk-like against a bare foot, and the reason the surface has a refined look without any pattern doing the work. The Turkish gives no dimension for this design, so this page gives none either.

03From the hand of the weaver

A rug washer, once every few years, is all it asks. Kütahya and Uşak looms, hand-finished at both ends. Tencel® pile: soft underfoot, with a natural brightness in daylight. Strong red closing around an open beige center. Designed in-house, after lines by Mevlana about flowing without freezing. Deliberately off-symmetry: a drawing with edges and no rules inside them. Red will set the tone of the whole room it goes into. One piece currently woven. It is for a room somebody wants to feel something in, which is not the same as a room somebody wants to look at.