3' x 4'6" Chinese Hereke Rug | Silk | Matched Pair

A matched pair of silk rugs, each one 3' x 4'6", knotted to the same cartoon so that the two are identical piece for piece. The design is Hereke, the Turkish court pattern of arched compartments packed with scrolling vine, and these were woven in China. At a glance each rug reads dark and metallic: a grey and black field under an apricot arcade, with the silk throwing light back unevenly so the same rug looks pale from one end and near black from the other.

The design

The rectangular field is built around a small upright medallion at the centre, flanked left and right by grey lobed cartouches and framed above and below by tall pointed compartments filled with fine leaf and vine work. An apricot outline runs around the whole arrangement, beaded with tiny rosettes, and curling half-palmettes fill the ground between the compartments so that almost no plain area is left. The main border is a black band carrying a grey palmette scroll; inside it sits a panel stripe of black cartouches with white and apricot flower sprays, and the ends finish in an ivory guard row of small rosettes before the white silk fringe. One end panel carries a woven signature cartouche on a wine red ground.

The colour

The field works in grey against black, from a soft pewter in the open compartments down to an unbroken black in the medallion and the border ground. Sage green picks out the side cartouches and much of the scrollwork in the border, cool enough to sit quietly beside the grey rather than compete with it. The warm note is brown, drawn out to apricot and caramel in the arcade outlines and the fine drawing of the border flowers. Ivory, and small dots of wine red and magenta in the guard stripes, keep the dark ground from closing up.

The making

Both rugs are hand-knotted with a silk pile on a silk foundation, the fringe silk as well, and the knotting is fine enough that the leaf forms inside the cartouches hold their outlines at an inch or two across. The pile is short and lies flat, which is what gives the pair their shifting sheen in the photographs. They were woven in China, are listed as new, and are in perfect condition, with no wear at the ends or along the selvedges.