6'8" x 10' Indian Mahi Rug | Wool and Silk | Black and Ivory

A 6'8" x 10' rectangular rug knotted in India in wool and silk, worked in the Mahi layout: a dark field carrying a fine repeating lattice, a pale diamond medallion at the centre, and a wide ivory border of palmettes and curling leaves. Seen from across a room the rug reads as two tones, dark centre and light surround, and only at closer range does the small-scale drawing inside each of them come apart into separate flowers.

Design

The Mahi, or fish, pattern fills both grounds with the same herati unit, a small diamond holding a rosette with curved leaves turned outward at its corners, repeated without a break across the whole field. A scalloped, stepped cartouche of black sits inside a lighter outer field, and within it a diamond medallion on ivory holds a rose-brown floral centre with a teal rosette at its heart. Long pendants hang from the medallion's top and bottom points, each ending in a small ivory palmette, and two further cartouches float above and below them in the dark ground. The main border runs on ivory with alternating palmettes and leaf scrolls in rust and olive, flanked by narrow tan guard stripes of rosettes and by a plain dark blue outer edge.

Colour

The field is a black that tips toward deep navy where the light crosses the pile, and it is broken up constantly by the rust, soft green and white of the lattice drawn across it. Against that, the ivory of the medallion and border is warm rather than chalky, shading into camel brown at the corners of the surrounding field. Rust carries most of the flowerheads, with clear teal blue and a dusty rose used sparingly inside the medallion and the border palmettes, enough to keep the two large masses of light and dark from sitting flat against each other.

Making

Hand-knotted in India in a pile of wool and silk, with the silk used in the finer outlines and highlights where it catches the light differently from the wool around it. The weave is tight enough to hold the small herati drawing cleanly, including the four white dots that punctuate each unit of the dark field. The rug is new and in perfect condition, with full pile, straight sides and plain ivory fringes at both ends.