Mughal floral carpets developed in the imperial workshops of north India during the seventeenth century, working from Persian templates but loosening the geometry into the looser, more naturalistic flora that Mughal painting had made its own. Lotus, palmette, and vine were drawn larger, set against quieter grounds, and given room to breathe across an ivory field. The piece in front of you is a contemporary weaving in that older drawing language, with the same restraint and the same insistence on a generous ground.

Three weavers shared the loom for about six months. The wool is hand-spun and dyed in small batches with vegetable pigments, pile knotted against a vertical cotton warp at a density tight enough to hold the curve of every petal. Total knot count runs to roughly two and a half million, every one tied by feel.

The composition

An ivory ground, the colour of old vellum, holds a scrolling vine in muted gold. The border carries a wider band of palmette and rosette in tones that shift from honey to old brass depending on the angle of light. Vegetable dye produces this kind of slow tonal drift across a single colour and is the reason a hand-knotted gold reads as a living surface rather than a flat field. The composition is built around restraint. Every centimetre of ivory is doing as much work as the gold figures on top of it.

What you are buying

Antique Mughal floral pieces of comparable scale and condition sell at international auction in the range of twenty-five to fifty thousand dollars. This is a new weaving in the same tradition, in the same fibre, on the same kind of loom. The rug appreciates with use rather than depreciating. The ivory will warm into bone, the gold will deepen, and the rug will be more itself in twenty years than it is on the day it arrives.

The piece in a room

9' x 12' (274 x 366 cm) suits a formal living room with a long sofa and a pair of armchairs floating on the pile, or a dining setting under a ten-seat table. Mid-tone walls in clay, pale ochre, or warm grey hold the ivory. Daylight is the rug's best friend; vegetable dye reveals its full range only under indirect natural light.

Conservation

Rotate the rug one hundred and eighty degrees each spring and autumn. Vacuum twice a week, suction only, beater bar off. Blot any spill with a clean cotton cloth working inward. Hand wash by a wool conservator every five years. Cared for this way, the rug runs eighty years and outlives its first owner.

Reference

• Medium: hand-knotted wool on cotton foundation
• Dimensions: 274 x 366 cm (9' x 12')
• Construction: Persian asymmetric knot
• Hands: 3 weavers, ~6 months
• Pile: 9 mm wool
• Colour: ivory ground with gold floral
• Dye: vegetable
• Origin: India

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