10' x 13'11" Indian Modern Rug | Wool | Beige and Charcoal

A 10' x 13'11" rug knotted in India in wool, worked in a modern design that borrows its vocabulary from tribal weaving and then refuses to arrange it symmetrically. At a glance it is a long field of sandy beige carrying a fine ivory lattice, with two blocks of charcoal sitting at opposite corners and a charcoal band running across one end.

Design

The field of this rectangular rug is covered edge to edge in a drawn lattice: rows of small diamonds with dotted centres, stepped squares holding four dots apiece, hooked crescents and short scribbled lines that read almost like script. Pale ivory tablets, shaped like flattened cartouches, float over the pattern at irregular intervals and break up the repeat. The charcoal elements are placed rather than framed. A cluster of large concentric diamonds fills the upper left corner, a matching cluster sits at the lower right, a single charcoal diamond stands alone in the middle of the field, and a charcoal band of diamonds and lozenges crosses the lower end. There is no continuous border on all four sides, which leaves the eye travelling across the rug instead of around it.

Colour

The ground moves between camel and a lighter sand within the beige range, striated horizontally where the yarn shifts from one batch to the next, so the field looks brushed rather than flat. Over it the lattice is drawn in undyed ivory and a cooler silver-grey, the two used side by side so some motifs sit forward and others recede. The dark passages read as charcoal grey rather than a hard black, close to slate in the close-up photographs, and their ivory outlines keep them from going heavy against the pale ground.

Making

Hand-knotted in wool on an Indian loom, with a flat, even back that shows the knot rows clearly and a pile short enough to hold the thin ivory drawing without blurring it. The table records the rug as new in both age and condition, and the flecks of darker fibre visible throughout the ground are natural variation in the wool rather than wear. It sits among the hand-knotted rugs made for contemporary rooms rather than copied from a historic pattern book.