The classical Persian rug 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.

A small team of weavers shared the loom for several months. Knot count consistent with the pile depth and the loom configuration the workshop uses for this design. The pile is long-staple New Zealand wool, spun in modest batches and dyed before it ever reached the loom. 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

An ivory ground that holds the pattern up like a sheet of paper. 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. Vegetable dye does not arrive complete. It moves over years, and the rug you live with at year ten is not the rug you take delivery of at year zero.

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 rug 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 131,097 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

At the size as listed the rug carries a primary room without dominating it. Mid-tone walls hold the saturation. Direct sunlight helps the dye depth that interior light slowly washes out. The pattern reads at a distance and rewards approach with the small irregularities only a hand-knotted rug carries.

Conservation

Quarter-turn the rug each season so the pattern wears uniformly. Suction-only vacuuming weekly, no beater bar. Blot spills with cotton and let the pile dry in open air. Hand wash by a wool conservator every six years. A vegetable-dyed wool rug, looked after this way, runs three generations.

Reference

• Medium: hand-knotted New Zealand wool on cotton foundation
• Dimensions: size as listed
• Construction: Persian asymmetric knot
• Knot density: ~120 KPSI
• Hands: a small team of weavers, several months
• Pile: 10 mm long-staple wool
• Dye: vegetable (madder, indigo, walnut hull, oak gall)
• Origin: India

Free freight India-wide. 14-day returns. The crate is built to be re-used for relocation or off-season storage.