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

A round rug of 6' x 6', hand-knotted in China with a silk pile, drawn to the Hereke pattern that Turkish workshops made their name with. At a glance it is a pale turquoise star floating on a field dark enough to read as black, ringed by a wide border of blue cartouches and finished with a long ivory fringe all the way round the circumference.

The design

The centre is a star medallion built from two rings of pointed petals, each petal filled with cream and saffron arabesques over a turquoise ground and separated from its neighbour by a fine drawn line, so the whole figure reads like a folded fan opened into a circle. Inside it sits a smaller knotwork rosette in aubergine and lilac over black, tightening to a four-petal flower no larger than a coin at the exact middle. The field around the star is not empty: it carries a dense scrolling vine in teal on black, visible only where the light crosses the pile. The main border runs a chain of boteh cartouches packed with small rosettes, held between narrow guard stripes and an outer band of mulberry, and the flatwoven end band outside that is beaded with single turquoise flowerheads before the fringe begins.

The colour

Two families do the work. The ground is an indigo so deep it passes for black in an ordinary room, and against it the medallion petals lift in chalky turquoise and a greener petrol blue that the silk throws differently depending on which way the pile lies. Cream and a dry saffron gold outline the scrollwork and keep it legible at a distance. The one surprise is the mulberry: a purple with grey in it, used for the knotwork at the heart of the star, for the outer border band and for scattered flowers in the cartouches, cool enough that it settles into the blues rather than fighting them.

The making

Hand-knotted in China with a silk pile on a silk foundation, the knotting fine enough to hold the hairline outlines around each petal without breaking them. The fringe is knotted and combed out at a generous length around the full circle, and the small woven flower band at the edge is part of the weave rather than an applied trim. The table records the rug as new and in perfect condition, with no wear, repair or fading, which matches what the photographs show: full pile and clean, unbroken edges. It is one of the recently woven pieces in our hand-knotted stock.