Rugsville Opera Purple Wool & Silk Carpet 8' x 10'

Purple was the most expensive dye in the ancient world. Tyrian purple required ten thousand sea snails for a single gram of pigment and was reserved by Roman edict for the imperial household. Vegetal substitutes from logwood and madder layered with indigo only became reliable in the nineteenth century, and even then a deep purple ground in a hand-knotted carpet remained the kind of statement that signalled a serious commission. The piece in front of you draws on that older association between purple and considered patronage.

Two to three weavers shared the loom for around five months. Hand-spun wool combined with silk highlight yarn, knotted against a cotton warp at the density needed to render the tonal depth purple demands. The colour is built from a base bath of madder, an over-dye of indigo, and silk highlights that catch reflected light and lift the field forward.

The composition

A field of deep aubergine purple with a quieter central reserve and a single guard border at the perimeter. Silk highlight yarn carries a slow arabesque that picks up reflected light and pulls a faint rose shift across the surface at certain angles. From one end of the room the rug reads as a near-black ground; from the other it reveals as a luminous purple. The composition is built around restraint. Pattern is held back so the colour can do the speaking.

What you are buying

Comparable wool and silk purple-ground transitional carpets sell through Western dealers between eighteen and thirty-five thousand dollars. This is a new weaving in the same drawing language, on the same loom, at the same density, made in India. The rug appreciates with use rather than depreciating. The silk highlights bloom further as the wool wears slightly to reveal them.

The piece in a room

8' x 10' (244 x 305 cm) anchors a primary bedroom, a formal sitting room, or a six-seat dining arrangement. Purple this saturated suits restrained surroundings. Pale plaster walls, oak, brass, and clean white linen let the rug behave as the room's single colour statement. Strong overhead light flattens the silk; lamp light at the perimeter brings it forward at night.

Conservation

Rotate every six months. Vacuum twice a week, suction only, beater bar disengaged. Blot any spill with a clean cotton cloth from the outside of the mark inward, never rub. Hand wash by a wool and silk trained conservator every five years. Cared for this way the rug lasts seventy years and longer.

Reference

• Medium: hand-knotted wool and silk on cotton foundation
• Dimensions: 244 x 305 cm (8' x 10')
• Construction: Persian asymmetric knot
• Hands: 2-3 weavers, ~5 months
• Pile: 10 mm
• Colour: purple with silk highlights
• Origin: India

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