Navy Musician Qum

100% silk pile, hand-knotted in Qum, with silk fringe at both ends. Silk is strong in tension but delicate in every other respect — it abrades, it marks with water, and it loses lustre permanently if treated like wool.

This is a picture rug and is best treated as one. The musician's face, hands and lute are drawn with very few knots, and wear on a floor would blur them quickly. The near-black field shows every speck of lint and every pale thread, while the ivory areas inside the vase and the border show marks. On a wall, away from direct light, it will keep both its detail and its colour.

The vase is one of the oldest motifs in Persian carpet design — whole 'vase carpets' are built from rows of small vases sprouting flowers. This rug takes a single vase and blows it up until it fills the field, then uses it as a picture frame. Trace its outline: the peach acanthus scrolls on either side are its handles and shoulders, the red lattice oval at the top is its mouth, and the portrait of the lute player sits exactly where the vase's painted belly would be. Below, the red peony is the flower growing from it, and the pedestal and plinth are its stand. The weaver added a joke for anyone who looks closely: at the base of the great vase, just under the peony, is a second vase in miniature, drawn the ordinary carpet size. It is the clearest clue that the big one is meant to be read as a vase and not just as a decorative frame.