4' x 4' Chinese Hereke Rug | Silk | Round

A round rug of 4' x 4', knotted in China with a pile of silk. At that diameter it sits in the accent sizes, small enough for an entry or the space under a round table. Seen whole, it reads as a single radiating star on a pale ground, ringed by dark concentric borders and finished with a deep ivory fringe that runs the full circumference.

Design

The centre is a shamsa, a sun disc built from sixteen long pointed petals that spring from a tiny rosette at the exact middle. Alternate petals carry a palmette in rust or in pale green, each filled with curling vine and a small cusped cartouche, and the shafts between them are feathered with fine barbs that give the whole medallion the look of a struck spark. Around the disc lies a cream field covered in thin tracery, so fine in the close photographs that it looks drawn rather than knotted. The main border is a procession of large boteh, each paisley outlined in gold and filled with blush and burgundy scrollwork, and it is framed by narrow guard bands of pale grey-green and teal. At the outermost edge an olive stripe gives way to a flatwoven ivory band scattered with small square rosettes, with a woven cartouche set into it on one side, and then the fringe.

Colour

The ground is ivory and beige, warming to a soft apricot where the medallion petals overlap it. Against that the main border is a dark inky blue with teal drawn through it, and the boteh are filled with saffron gold, blush pink and a deep burgundy. The petals alternate between rust and apple green, with the darker shafts running to a tobacco brown where the silk catches the light. An olive stripe at the edge is the one flat, opaque note in the piece, and it does the useful work of separating the dark border from the ivory flatweave.

Making

The rug is hand-knotted with a silk pile, which is what allows the drawing to stay this fine in a piece only four feet across, and what makes the colours shift as you walk round it. Hereke is the name of a Turkish weaving town and here it describes the design, the radiating medallion and boteh border; the weaving itself was done in China. The table records the rug as new and the condition as perfect, with the fringe full and even all the way round.