6' x 6' Chinese Hereke Rug | Silk | Round

A round rug measuring Width: 6' x Length: 6', hand-knotted in China with a pile of silk and worked to a Hereke design, the pattern named for the Turkish weaving town. At arm's length it reads as one enormous starburst: a pale medallion throwing long tapering rays across a field so dark it is almost black, ringed by a wide turquoise border. The silk holds the light differently depending on where you stand, so the field shifts between near-black and a deep plum as you walk around it. At 6' x 6' it suits a round table, a stair landing or the middle of an entrance hall.

Design

The centre is a many-pointed rosette built in tiers, each ring a smaller repeat of the one outside it, the innermost a single blue flower head no wider than a thumbnail. From the points of that rosette, sixteen long ivory rays run out across the field, tipped with fine needle points that stop short of the border. Between the rays sit panels of blue arabesque and split-leaf scrollwork, and beyond them the dark ground carries a faint all-over vine that only shows when the light rakes across the pile. Small pendant cartouches hang from the medallion at the four quarters. The main border is a turquoise band of linked palmettes and rosettes on a curling vine, framed inside and out by ivory guard stripes with a black meander, a narrow black outer stripe, and a flat woven ivory edge dotted with little turquoise and tan flower heads before the silk fringe.

Colour

Turquoise does most of the work here, from the clear bright band of the border to the softer, greyer blue inside the medallion panels. The rays and the rosette are ivory and a warm sand that runs to camel brown at the centre, with touches of apricot gold in the border flowers. Outlines are drawn in black, sharp enough to keep each leaf separate at close range, and small points of crimson appear in the flower centres. The field is the darkest element by a long way, a brown-black that lets the pale medallion sit forward off the ground rather than lie flat in it.

Making

Hand-knotted in China with a silk pile on a silk-fringed foundation, the knotting fine enough to carry the hair-thin outlines and the needle-point ray tips visible in the close photographs. The pile is short and even, with the sheen that silk gives at an angle. The rug is new and in perfect condition, with no wear to the pile, the edges or the fringe.