Rugsville Oxidye Floral Black Wool Silk Designer Persian Carpet 4' x 6'

The classical Persian carpet vocabulary was codified at the Safavid court workshops in the sixteenth century and has been carried forward by village and town weavers ever since. The pattern in this rug works inside that long tradition.

The carpet was set up at a vertical loom, where one weaver worked it for two to three months. Around 622,080 knots in total, every one tied by feel against a vertical beam. The pile is a wool ground with silk picking out the pattern, the wool carrying the body of the field and the silk lifting the highlights with a slight surface lustre. 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

A near-black ground built from over-dyed indigo and walnut hull rather than carbon, which gives the field a slight blue cast in raking light. The pattern carries a central medallion, quartered spandrels, and a layered border the eye reads as a single composition rather than a sum of motifs. The slight irregularity in the dye, what the trade calls abrash, is not a flaw. It is the visible record of small batches dyed at separate moments and worked into the field at the loom.

What you are buying

Hand-knotted wool of this grade, in this composition, is sold by Western design dealers at three to four times this listing once the carpet has been sourced, freighted, and presented in a showroom. 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 84,000 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

4' x 6' (122 x 183 cm) anchors a small seating area, the foot of a king bed, or a study. Pairs with brass, ivory plaster, raw oak, and the cooler stone tones that lift the field.

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 with silk highlights on cotton foundation
• Dimensions: 122 x 183 cm (4' x 6')
• Construction: Persian asymmetric knot
• Knot density: ~180 KPSI
• Total knot count: ~622,080
• Hands: one weaver, two to three months
• Pile: 9 mm wool with silk-picked highlights
• Dye: vegetable (madder, indigo, walnut hull, oak gall)
• Origin: India

Delivered free across India. Cash on delivery available. 7-day exchange from receipt.