Modern Art is a working title rather than a description, and the piece earns it by treating the rug as a painter would treat a stretched canvas. Multiple grounds shifting across the field, areas of high colour set against quiet passages, deliberate asymmetry, and silk used the way a painter uses thinned oil to lift a particular passage above the surrounding matte ground. The cartoon was developed in the studio over four months of drawing before the loom was warped, and corrections were made to the cartoon as the first metres came off the beam.

Three weavers shared the loom across six months of knotting. The pile is a wool and silk blend, with the silk distributed asymmetrically across the cartoon to lift specific colour passages. Wool was kettle-dyed in seventeen separate skein batches to support the multi-colour composition without flattening any of the relationships. Knots are Persian asymmetric tied against the loom beam, the foreman walking the loom daily to keep tonal continuity at the seams between the three weavers.

The composition

Multiple grounds shift across the field: a deep teal upper passage, an ochre band that crosses the centre at a low diagonal, a soft pearl grey along one edge, and saffron, indigo, and rust accents distributed asymmetrically. The silk catches in the warm passages. There is no border and no symmetry. The composition reads as a layered painter's canvas. The relationships between the colour fields keep rearranging themselves under different light.

What you are buying

Modernist hand-knotted carpets in wool and silk at 8' x 10' (244 x 305 cm) from the contemporary European studios sit at $10,000 to $20,000 with gallery margin. This piece is woven to the same construction, the same fibre choice, and the same painterly cartoon discipline, sold direct from India at the workshop margin. A multi-colour wool and silk rug appreciates as the silk burnishes through its first decade.

The piece in a room

8' x 10' (244 x 305 cm) holds a sectional sofa with a coffee table, a primary bedroom with a king bed, or a dining area for six. The multi-colour palette wants quiet walls. Chalk, oat, fog grey, and warm white all hold the field. Pairs with bleached oak, raw concrete, blackened steel, and any one strong piece of contemporary art on the principal wall.

Conservation

Rotate the rug twice a year for even wear. Suction-only weekly vacuuming with the beater bar disengaged. Blot any spill with cotton, no rubbing. Specialist hand wash every five to seven years. The rug runs sixty to eighty years on this care.

Reference

• Medium: hand-knotted wool with mulberry silk, cotton foundation
• Dimensions: 244 x 305 cm (8' x 10')
• Construction: Persian asymmetric knot
• Hands: 3 weavers, 6 months
• Pile: 10 mm
• Origin: India

Free UK delivery. 14-day returns. Authentic hand-knotted craftsmanship.