Rugsville Turquoise Overdyed Wool Carpet 6' x 9'

Turquoise as a textile colour came down a long road. The pigment first appears in glazed brick on the gates of ancient Persia, then on the tiled domes of Timurid mosques, and finally in the dye baths of nineteenth century Caucasian and Anatolian weavers who learned to balance copper sulphate against indigo to hold a clean blue-green that would not dull in lamplight. An overdyed turquoise carpet picks up that lineage and carries it through the late-twentieth-century studio idea of taking a finished traditional rug and submerging it whole in a single hand-prepared bath of pigment.

This 6' x 9' (183 x 274 cm) carpet was hand-knotted in India by two to three weavers over five to six months. The base is New Zealand wool on a cotton warp and weft, sheared close after weaving, washed to relax the surface lustre, and then lowered into a copper-tinted indigo bath where the dye took differently to wool that had aged in slightly different conditions. That irregularity is the point. The colour reads as a single turquoise from across a room and as a watercolour study of a turquoise from arm's length.

The composition

Ground colour is a warm, slightly green-shifted turquoise. Older floral and medallion motifs sit beneath the wash like a watermark in handmade paper, more visible at oblique angles, almost lost when looked at straight on. The blue will continue to age. Sunlight will deepen the green tint, traffic will burnish the high points of the pile, and the piece will move through ten or fifteen tonal stages over its working life.

What you are buying

Hand-knotted overdyed wool of this calibre is sold in European and American galleries at three to five lakh rupees once it crosses borders. The fibre, the foundation, and the immersion process are identical to that supply chain. The carpet appreciates with use rather than depreciating, which puts it in a different financial category from any other floor covering.

The piece in a room

6' x 9' (183 x 274 cm) anchors a sitting area without dictating it. The turquoise wants warm neutrals around it: aged brass, walnut, raw linen, lime-washed terracotta. Pale stone floors push the blue forward; dark hardwood lets it settle into the architecture. Pairs especially well with a single piece of mid-century walnut furniture and otherwise minimal upholstery.

Conservation

Rotate twice a year, vacuum weekly with suction only and the beater bar lifted, blot rather than scrub when something spills. A specialist hand-wash every five years preserves the dye depth. The wool fibre and the bath dye are both forgiving of conservative care, and the piece is built to outlast a generation of normal use.

Reference

• Medium: hand-knotted wool on cotton foundation
• Dimensions: 183 x 274 cm (6' x 9')
• Construction: Persian asymmetric knot, full-immersion overdye
• Hands: 2 to 3 weavers, ~5 to 6 months
• Pile: 8 mm
• Dye: indigo and copper-based overdye, hand-prepared
• Origin: India

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