Named for the empress whose marble cenotaph at Agra is the closest the subcontinent comes to a national monument, the Mumtaz weave aims at a comparable register. Densely worked fields, restrained palettes, motifs drawn from Mughal manuscript painting and from the inlaid stone work of the Taj. The technique is contemporary, the lineage is four hundred years old. What this rug carries into a current interior is the inheritance of that practice.

2 weavers shared the loom for 4 months. The hand-spun wool was tied knot by knot against a vertical beam, the pattern read off a cartoon set behind the warp. Plant dyes were prepared in copper vats over four to six weeks of slow extraction before the wool was lowered. The rug is offered in a natural register, made in India.

The composition

Natural carries the field. The motifs sit in measured intervals across the field, with the border holding the composition rather than competing with it. The wool will lighten in the high-light areas over the next decade and the dyes will deepen in the protected zones, the pattern of slow change every plant-dyed pile carries. The corners will not match exactly, which is the proof that a person rather than a printer made the surface. Pairs well with linen, leather, walnut, and oak. Pairs less well with strongly patterned upholstery, where the rug expects to be the dominant graphic element in the room.

The piece in a room

The format here anchors a primary bedroom or a compact living room. The rug sits below a queen bed or in front of a three-seater sofa, with the pattern reading as the field that pulls everything else into relation. Walls in plaster, putty, or warm white hold the saturation, while darker walls let the rug settle into the architecture as a considered ground.

Conservation

Rotate a half turn each spring and autumn so light and traffic age the surface evenly. Vacuum weekly with the beater bar disengaged, suction only. Blot spills with a clean cotton cloth, never rub. Hand-wash by a wool-trained conservator every five to seven years. With this care, the rug runs eighty to a hundred years and outlives its first owners. Storage between uses should be flat or rolled around a tube, never folded, with a layer of unbleached cotton between the pile and any other surface.

Reference

• Medium: hand-knotted wool on cotton foundation
• Dimensions: size as listed above
• Construction: Persian asymmetric knot
• Knot density: ~180 KPSI
• Total knot count: ~1.2 million
• Hands: 2 weavers, 4 months
• Pile: 8-10 mm hand-spun wool
• Origin: India

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