Rugsville Shivling Grey Wool & Silk Carpet 6' x 6'

The shivling form is one of the oldest aniconic shapes in Indian visual culture, recorded in stone at temple sites that predate written record. Translated to a contemporary Tibetan loom and rendered on a round, the motif loses its sculptural specificity and becomes a tonal ovoid floating in a graphite field, the way a seed pearl sits inside a concave silver setting. The colour is grey on grey, the pattern almost dissolved, the rug working as a piece of soft modernist abstraction with a long Indian root.

Two weavers shared the loom on this 6' (183 cm) round for roughly four months. The pile is hand-spun wool blended with bombyx mulberry silk on a cotton foundation, tied with the Tibetan senna loop and cut to two slightly different heights to give the central form a shallow relief above the surrounding grey field. The wool was dyed in iron mordant with a small percentage of walnut hull. The silk was undyed and used in its natural cream state to lift the highlights of the central oval.

The composition

Three values of grey, a warm cream from the undyed silk, and an almost imperceptible darker outline that defines the central form. From the distance of a doorway, the piece reads as a soft circular field with one suggestion of weight at the centre. Up close, the wool reveals its hand-spun irregularity and the silk catches afternoon light. The grey will continue to age. Iron-mordanted wool deepens slowly as the iron oxidises further inside the fibre, and the cream silk holds its tone as a counterpoint.

What you are buying

Round Tibetan carpets in wool and silk, particularly at this size, are uncommon enough that Western dealers price them between three and four and a half lakh rupees when they appear at gallery shows. The senna construction, the silk content, and the natural mordant dye process are identical to that pipeline. The piece is hand-knotted in India in the same workshops that supply New York and London designers, and it appreciates with use rather than depreciating.

The piece in a room

A 6' (183 cm) round in grey reads as a quiet ground in almost any setting. It works under a circular dining table for four, in a foyer where a square rug would feel rigid, or beneath a single armchair set against pale plaster walls. The palette pairs with limed oak, white marble, brushed nickel, and indigo upholstery. A single black and white photograph reads well above it. Strong colour in the room should be reserved for upholstery; the rug holds the floor as a quiet ground.

Conservation

Rotate a quarter turn each season. Vacuum weekly with suction only, beater bar lifted off the silk passages. Blot with cotton, never rub. A wool-and-silk specialist hand-wash every five years preserves both the dye depth and the silk lustre. With this care, the rug runs sixty to seventy years and the grey deepens into a colour the original mordant never reached on day one.

Reference

• Medium: hand-knotted wool and bombyx silk on cotton foundation
• Dimensions: 183 cm diameter (6' round)
• Construction: Tibetan senna loop, two-height cut
• Hands: 2 weavers, ~4 months
• Pile: 11 mm
• Dye: iron mordant with walnut hull supplement
• Origin: India

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