Rugsville Traditional Wool Red & Ivory Carpet 10' x 14'

By the late nineteenth century, Persian court weavers had standardised a vocabulary of red-ground field carpets that travelled west on every steamer leaving the Gulf. Deep madder reds, ivory medallions, vine work knotted small enough to read as drawing rather than as repeated motif. The pattern in front of you sits in that lineage, knotted by a workshop in India that has spent two generations rebuilding the dye recipes after they were lost to the chemical era.

Four weavers worked the loom for roughly eight months. Each line was tied by hand from a paper cartoon hung above the warp, knot by knot, with a small steel hook. The pile is hand-spun wool from highland flocks, washed in cold river water before dyeing so the lanolin holds the colour long after the rug enters traffic. The reds are madder root, the ivory is undyed wool from white sheep, and the secondary indigos and ochres come from plant baths matured for two weeks before the skeins are lowered.

The composition

A central medallion in soft ivory holds the field together, surrounded by a sea of madder red broken by trailing vines and small palmettes. The borders run in three layers, the inner one ivory to echo the medallion, the outer two indigo and ochre to frame the red without competing with it. The colour will breathe with the room. Madder lightens slowly toward terracotta, ivory warms toward bone, and the indigos deepen as the wool oxidises in daylight.

What you are buying

Comparable nineteenth-century Persian carpets in 10' x 14' (305 x 427 cm) format with similar palette and condition trade at international auction in the range of forty to ninety thousand dollars when they appear. This is a new weaving in the same tradition, on the same kind of vertical loom, in hand-spun wool dyed by the same plant chemistry. It appreciates with use rather than depreciating, and the price is set against contemporary cost rather than against the secondary market it will eventually enter.

The piece in a room

10' x 14' (305 x 427 cm) is the scale that holds a large drawing room or a long dining setting with chairs fully drawn back. The red carries warm-toned walls, walnut joinery, brass lighting, and leather upholstery without strain. Soft incandescent light deepens the field, daylight reveals the abrash and the small irregularities of hand-spun yarn.

Conservation

Rotate the rug a half turn each spring and autumn to even out wear from light and footfall. Vacuum gently each week with the beater bar disengaged, and never the fringe. Blot spills with a clean cotton cloth, working from the outside in. Engage a wool-trained conservator for a hand wash every five to seven years, never a steam clean. Cared for this way, the carpet outlives a generation of furniture above it.

Reference

• Medium: hand-knotted wool on cotton foundation
• Dimensions: 305 x 427 cm (10' x 14')
• Construction: Persian asymmetric knot
• Hands: 4 weavers, approximately 8 months
• Pile: hand-spun highland wool
• Dye: vegetable (madder, indigo, ochre)
• Origin: India

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