Rugsville Oushaks Traditional Floral Ivory Wool Persian Carpet 63404

The wool in this carpet was spun from a long-staple New Zealand fleece chosen for the way it absorbs dye. Short fibres take colour at the surface and bleach out quickly. Long fibres carry pigment through the strand and hold the saturation as the pile is walked down over the years.

The carpet was set up at a vertical loom, where a small team of weavers worked it for several months. Knot count consistent with the pile depth and the loom configuration the workshop uses for this design. The pile is long-staple New Zealand wool, spun in modest batches and dyed before it ever reached the loom. The dyes were drawn from madder root, indigo, walnut hull, and oak gall, prepared in copper vats and matured for two to three weeks before the yarn was lowered.

The composition

An ivory ground that holds the pattern up like a sheet of paper. The pattern carries the open field and large-scale medallion vocabulary of the western Anatolian school, with the corner work simplified to a single quartered motif rather than the layered spandrel of the Persian schools. Vegetable dye does not arrive complete. It moves over years, and the rug you live with at year ten is not the rug you take delivery of at year zero.

What you are buying

Antique Oushak carpets with comparable composition and pile, when they appear at all at Christie's, Sotheby's, or Rippon Boswell, sit in a price band that the new weaving in the same tradition will not approach for two generations. The rug appreciates with use rather than depreciating, which is a property no other object on a floor carries at any price. The cost per year over a sixty-year working life puts the piece below the cost of a printed reproduction with a five-year horizon. The list price of around Rs 30,000 reflects a workshop equivalent on the open market; the listed price brings the rug down to the level of a serious entry into collecting hand-knotted wool.

The piece in a room

At the size as listed the rug carries a primary room without dominating it. Mid-tone walls hold the saturation. Direct sunlight helps the dye depth that interior light slowly washes out. The pattern reads at a distance and rewards approach with the small irregularities only a hand-knotted carpet carries.

Conservation

Rotate a half turn each spring and autumn so light and traffic age the rug 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 carpet runs eighty to a hundred years and outlasts its first owners.

Reference

• Medium: hand-knotted New Zealand wool on cotton foundation
• Dimensions: size as listed
• Construction: Persian asymmetric knot
• Knot density: ~120 KPSI
• Hands: a small team of weavers, several months
• Pile: 10 mm long-staple wool
• Dye: vegetable (madder, indigo, walnut hull, oak gall)
• Origin: India

Shipping anywhere in India is on us. Cash on delivery available. 7-day return window if the piece does not sit right in the room.