5'5" x 7'9" Indian Transitional Rug | Wool and Silk | Beige and Cream

A 5'5" x 7'9" rug hand-knotted in India from wool with silk, worked almost entirely in two tones. The field is a flat sand beige and everything drawn on it is cream, so the pattern reads by texture as much as by colour: the silk sits proud of the wool ground and catches light where the wool does not. At a distance the rug looks like a plain neutral rectangle; from a few feet away a dense floral network comes up out of it.

Design

The field carries an allover transitional pattern of thin vines that run the length of the rug, hung with small five-petal blossoms, curling serrated leaves and paired tulip forms. Set into that network are rows of large ovoid cones, pineapple-like shapes filled with a fine lattice of dots, staggered so that no two sit directly above one another. A narrow guard line separates the field from a broad main border of round rosettes and flat palmettes, each one open-centred and ringed with leafwork, alternating with smaller blossom clusters. Outer and inner guard stripes repeat a simple running vine. The corners resolve the border pattern rather than cutting it off, which the close view in image 11 shows clearly.

Colour

Two tones do the whole job. The ground is a warm sand beige, closer to oatmeal under flat light and a shade greyer where the pile lies away from the camera, and the drawing on top of it is cream to ivory in silk. Because the silk is both lighter and shinier, the contrast changes as you walk around the rug: from one end the vines read pale against a darker field, from the other they nearly disappear. A few of the border flowerheads and one or two of the cones carry a faint apricot warmth, not a separate colour so much as the wool taking the dye a little differently. The fringe is undyed white.

Making

Hand-knotted in India, new, and in perfect condition. The pile is wool and silk together, the wool forming the ground and the silk reserved for the pattern, which is what produces the low relief visible in the rolled view: the silk areas stand slightly higher and the wool ground is clipped down around them. The back, seen at the folded corner, shows an even, tight knotting with the design legible node by node. It sits within the wool and silk group alongside other recently woven pieces in our full inventory.