Rugsville Kashmir Medallion Orange Light Blue Silk Carpet 4' x 6'

Pure silk takes pigment to a saturation that wool will not reach, which is why the high-knot ateliers of northern India have always used it for the brightest of the medallion plans. Orange laid against light blue is one of the most demanding palettes in the silk vocabulary, an opposition pair on the colour wheel that must be balanced by intensity rather than overlap. This carpet handles the problem the way the Mughal designers handled it five centuries ago, by giving the orange a smaller territory at the centre and letting the cooler blue take up most of the field. The composition holds its tension at every distance.

Two weavers worked for around seven months. The dye bath drew on madder, indigo, weld, and a saffron extract for the warmest tones; the indigo produced the open blue of the field and the madder built the saturated orange medallion. Each knot was tied by feel in mulberry silk on cotton, asymmetric Persian construction, the slow weave that allows a colour change to land inside a single millimetre. Silk holds a wider chromatic range than any natural fibre and reflects light in two registers, surface and depth.

The composition

A circular orange medallion at the centre of an open light-blue ground, four small concentric motifs spilling outward in cardinal directions. The border is built in a triple frame, the central band carrying small palmette repeats. The orange and blue stay in tension because each holds its own value rather than dissolving into the other. Over the years the indigo will shift slightly toward dusk and the madder will warm toward terracotta, settling the field into a single quieter conversation.

What you are buying

Equivalent silk carpets in this density and condition trade through Indian auction rooms between three and six lakh rupees, with antique attribution pushing the upper end. This is a contemporary weaving in the same lineage, made on the same kind of loom in the same fibre at the same density. The carpet appreciates with use rather than depreciating. Silk pile compacts under footfall and grows in surface gloss rather than wearing thin.

The piece in a room

4' x 6' (122 x 183 cm) suits the foot of a bed, a child's bedroom (the colour scheme reads young without reading childish), or the focal floor of a small sitting room. The cool blue ground does not compete with art on the wall, so the carpet works under a single bold painting or a wall of books. White walls open the field. Pale plaster, walnut, brass, and bleached oak floors all sit naturally against this palette.

Conservation

Rotate a quarter turn each season for even light exposure and traffic. Vacuum on suction only, never with a beater bar. Treat any spill by blotting straight down with a clean dry cotton cloth, never wiping. Have the carpet cleaned by a silk-trained conservator every three years. Under that regime the carpet runs sixty years and gathers lustre the whole time.

Reference

• Medium: hand-knotted mulberry silk on cotton foundation
• Dimensions: 122 x 183 cm (4' x 6')
• Construction: Persian asymmetric knot
• Hands: 2 weavers, ~7 months
• Pile: 6 mm silk
• Dye: vegetable (madder, indigo, weld, saffron)
• Origin: India

Free shipping across India. Cash on delivery available. 7-day exchange. The carpet ships crated in a way that may be re-used to insure the piece during storage or relocation.