8'1" x 10' Indian Modern Rug | Wool and Silk | Grey and Ivory

A 8'1" x 10' rug hand-knotted in India with a pile of wool and silk. At a glance it reads as two flat areas of colour: an open ivory field, faintly striped where the wool shifts tone from row to row, held inside a wide silver grey border that runs the full perimeter. There is no medallion, no repeat and no fringe, and the rectangular outline is finished with a plain overcast edge, so the whole of the drawing is carried by the two blocks of colour and a handful of small marks.

Design

The field is left empty. What pattern there is sits in the border: small four-armed crosses, each about the size of a thumbnail, spaced at regular intervals along all four sides, picked out in ivory against the grey. A few of them appear in a paler, barely-there grey rather than ivory, so the rhythm along the border is not quite uniform. The inner edge of the border is a clean straight line with no guard stripe, and the corners are solved by simply letting the two bands meet. This is modern drawing in the plainest sense, closer to a framed panel than to a traditional layout, and it gives the surface striation of the weave the room to show.

Colour

The field is ivory through to cream, warming to a sandy beige in the areas where the light rakes across the pile, with fine horizontal banding from the natural variation in the yarn. The border is a light to silver grey with a brown undertone, a shade or two darker at the outer edge than where it meets the field. The two sit close enough on the same neutral scale that the contrast is quiet, and the ivory crosses are the only points in the rug where a colour reads as sharp rather than blended.

Making

Hand-knotted, with a pile of wool and silk. The silk shows chiefly as a sheen on the paler field, catching the light differently from the matt grey border, while the wool carries the texture and the subtle tonal shifts. The back, visible in the last photograph, is evenly knotted with a close, regular grid and no distortion in the weave. The rug comes from India and is new, in perfect condition, one of many hand-knotted rugs we carry in this neutral register.