Pink & Rose Rugs

Most of the pink in an old rug started out red. Madder at low concentration gives a soft rose, and madder at full strength gives a rose eighty years later, so a good deal of what is sold as a pink rug is a red rug that has done its time. Kerman is the exception: there, the rose was deliberate, and the city built a palette around it.

Pink as an outcome, not a decision

Three different things arrive at the same colour. A weak madder bath gives pink from the start. A strong madder bath gives pink slowly, by mellowing, which is why the field of an old Kashan can be a full tone lighter than its own selvedge where the sun never reached. And the fugitive early synthetic reds of roughly 1890 to 1930 faded fast and unevenly, which is why some rugs of that period look pink now and certainly did not then. Reading which of the three is in front of you means looking at the base of the pile, where the original colour survives.

The cities that chose it

Rose is the signature of Kerman weaving, used with ivory and pale green in a drawing that owes as much to European taste as to Persian. Sarouk rugs are known for a raspberry-plum field, deeper and heavier. The soft pinks of Oushak production sit at the other end, low in saturation and close to the ground colour. A cooler, bluer pink appears in Caucasian weaving and in some Persian work, and that one is usually cochineal or lac rather than madder, an insect dye bought in rather than grown.

What it does in a room

Old rose next to camel, cream and pale brown reads as a neutral rather than as pink, which is the reason these rugs survive in rooms that would never be described as pink. Against cold white or a strong grey it separates out and starts to look like a decision. It sits badly next to rust, which turns both colours muddy. In wool a faded rose is hard to beat at hiding wear, for the obvious reason that it is already halfway there.

If this is not quite the colour

The same rug at full saturation is in red and burgundy, and the pale version with the colour taken out is in ivory and beige. Most genuinely softened examples sit among the older rugs, because the softening takes decades and cannot be bought new without a wash that costs the wool something. For a clean rose with no drawing in it at all, a Gabbeh will carry the colour flat.