Vintage Patchwork Modern Overdyed Hand Knotted Area Carpet-Olive 11080 5' x 8'

Olive is a quiet colour, and the carpet trade has not always known how to handle it. The over-dye family arrived at olive by routing weld and walnut hull through a small indigo correction, then applying the bath cold over salvaged wool already carrying dark grounds. The result is the colour of an oil bottle held against a window, neither yellow nor green nor brown but the average of all three, the kind of olive the painter Morandi would have used as the dominant glaze on a still life of three vessels.

This rug was hand-knotted across roughly four months on a vertical Indian loom by two weavers and a finisher. Antique pile fragments were cut, sorted by tone, and re-knotted onto a cotton warp before the body was sent to the wash team for the olive over-dye. The wool is hand-spun mountain fleece. The over-dye was applied in two passes to build depth, with the second pass weighted slightly more toward indigo to keep the green register from flattening.

The composition

A continuous olive field, deepening into bronze at older red-ground fragments and lifting into khaki where the underlying pile was originally lighter. Vine work, medallion fragments, and border lines surface as faded silhouettes under the over-dye. In daylight the carpet reads green-grey; under warm artificial light it leans bronze. That tonal mobility is the design intent.

What you are buying

Olive-saturated patchwork carpets are scarcer than red and blue variants because the dye is harder to land cleanly without slipping into mud. Comparable hand-finished pieces move through European specialist dealers at $4,000 to $7,500. The rug here is the same construction, in the same wool, finished to the same standard. Olive over-dye matures gracefully, gaining a slightly cooler register over a decade rather than fading, and the carpet appreciates with use rather than depreciating.

The piece in a room

5' x 8' (152 x 244 cm) anchors a smaller library, a primary dressing room, or a guest sitting area with two armchairs. The olive palette pairs with chalk walls, raw oak, terracotta pottery, brass lighting, and any natural leather. It works particularly well alongside black-and-white photographic prints and unupholstered wooden seating.

Conservation

Weekly vacuuming on suction only keeps the pile lifted. Turn the carpet a half rotation every six months. Spills are best handled with cold water on cotton cloth, blotted from the outside in. Avoid commercial detergents; they strip the over-dye unevenly. A specialist wool wash every five years revives the saturation. With this approach, the carpet runs forty years of household use and remains conservable.

Reference

• Medium: hand-knotted wool on cotton foundation
• Dimensions: 152 x 244 cm (5' x 8')
• Construction: asymmetric knot, patchwork over-dye
• Hands: 2 weavers and 1 finisher, around 4 months
• Pile: 9 mm hand-spun wool
• Finish: olive over-dye, weld and walnut base with indigo correction
• Origin: India

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