4'6" x 6'9" Silk Rug | Hereke Design Turquoise and Black Medallion | Signed, Brand New

Pick this one up and the first thing you notice is weight for its size: all silk, pile and foundation, packed tight enough that the back reads almost like fabric. The 4'6" x 6'9" format is the size collectors actually buy in silk, small enough to live in front of a sofa or at the foot of a bed, fine enough to hang on a wall. The medallion sits dead center on a near-black ground that turns peacock and turquoise the moment you walk around it, and the weaver signed the piece in a small cartouche woven into the ivory end panel. It is brand new, never used, and ships with a certificate of authenticity. Among hand-knotted silk rugs in this size class, the drawing here is unusually disciplined.

Design and Motifs

The layout is a classic Hereke composition: one round medallion, 4 corner spandrels, and a field that never goes quiet between them. The medallion opens as a ring of long petals, each one drawn separately with its own scrolling vine and tiny cloudband curls in gold and ivory, closing on a dark knotted star at the center where aubergine, black and lilac lines interlace like strapwork around a single 4 petal rosette. The spandrels repeat that vocabulary at the corners with cusped outlines, hooked palmettes and small lozenge cartouches. Between and behind all of it runs a dense all over lattice of tiny leaf and blossom forms, so fine that it reads as texture until you kneel down. The border system is three deep: a broad turquoise main band of upright palmettes and split arabesques, ivory guard stripes carrying a running rosette and leaf meander, a lilac and black minor stripe, and a plain black outer band that frames the whole thing. The ivory end panel of rosettes holds the signature cartouche.

Turquoise, Blue and Black Under the Silk Luster

The field is the interesting part. Its ground is a blue so deep it photographs as black from one end and as inky teal from the other, with the small tracery drawn over it in bright turquoise so the surface shimmers rather than sits flat. That directional shift is pure silk: the pile throws light one way and absorbs it the other, which is why the same field looks midnight in one photo and peacock in the next. Against it the medallion petals run pale aqua and soft sea glass, shaded with ivory and warm saffron gold, and the medallion core drops to near black with dull plum and lilac lines crossing through it. The main border lifts to a clear mid turquoise, cooler and lighter than the field, edged by cream, gold and a thin mauve stripe that keeps the blues from reading cold. The fringe and end panels are pale ivory silk with a faint pewter cast.

Hereke Design and Fine Silk Weaving

Hereke is a court design language, developed in the imperial workshop of that name for palace commissions, and it is famously unforgiving: curved petal outlines, hairline vine work and lettered cartouches only resolve at a very high knot count. This piece was woven in China, which is where a great deal of the world's best contemporary hand-knotted silk work is now produced, and the weaver had the knot density to carry the drawing, as you can see where a single ivory outline holds its curve through a full petal without stepping. Silk warps keep the rug thin and flexible, silk wefts let the knots pack tight, and a silk pile clipped low is what gives the field its mirror shift. If you are weighing this against a wool piece, the difference is not just sheen but resolution, and the comparison between a Persian and an Oriental rug comes down to exactly that kind of detail. At this scale it works equally well on the floor or framed on a wall.