The Agra Old Styles line draws specifically on the nineteenth-century Agra weavings now held in museum and private collections in Britain, Europe, and the United States. The originals were woven in hand-spun wool with natural dyes and acquired their characteristic patina over a hundred years of use. The Old Styles weaving carries the same fibre and the same knot but compresses the aging process into the loom itself, producing a piece that arrives reading as already settled.

Three weavers spent close to six months on this 8' round (244 x 244 cm) carpet. The pile is hand-spun wool, dyed in small batches to maintain the lot-to-lot variation that gives the antique reading. Each knot was tied by feel against a vertical loom. The round shape was charted row by row across the curve, with the cotton foundation reinforced at the widest part of the field. The pile was sheared low to expose the natural irregularity of the hand-spun fibre.

The composition

A beige ground with deep black motif work at the centre and around the border of the round field. The black sits flat and grounds the curve at the four cardinal points where the design's symmetry resolves. The beige carries the slight tonal drift of hand-spun wool rather than the uniform colour of mill-spun fibre, which is what allows the rug to read as a settled antique rather than as a new weaving.

What you are buying

A new weaving that reads as a hundred-year-old Agra. Hand-spun wool, hand-knotted construction, natural dyes, on a cotton foundation woven in India. Comparable nineteenth-century Agra rounds at this scale cross ₹15 to ₹25 lac at international auction when they appear. The Old Styles offers the same fibre and the same hand against a fraction of that entry, and the rug appreciates with use rather than depreciating.

The piece in a room

8' round (244 x 244 cm) carries a round dining table seating six to eight, a centred conversation area with two facing sofas, or a generous foyer beneath a chandelier. The beige-and-black palette pairs with white walls, with mid-tone painted rooms, and with both warm and cool wood floors. Avoid heavily patterned upholstery; the Old Styles motif expects to do the graphic work of the room.

Conservation

Rotate a quarter turn every three months because the round format has no long edge to absorb directional wear. Vacuum weekly with the beater bar off. Blot spills with a dry cotton cloth; the black border will show watermark rings if a wet spill is allowed to dry from its outer edge. Hand wash by a fibre-trained conservator every five years.

Reference

• Medium: hand-knotted hand-spun wool on cotton foundation
• Dimensions: 244 x 244 cm (8' Round)
• Construction: Persian asymmetric knot
• Hands: 3 weavers, ~6 months
• Pile: 9 mm hand-spun wool
• Dye: natural
• Origin: India

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