Rose Red and Orange Banded Kilim, Hand-Woven Wool

Material: 100 percent hand-spun wool, flat-woven with soumak embroidered banding. No pile.

Care instructions

• Always use a rug pad underneath — a flatweave slips easily without one.
• Vacuum gently with the beater bar off, working along the bands rather than across them.
• Turn the kilim over every year — it is reversible and wears evenly if used both sides.
• Blot spills immediately, working from the outside in.
• Have the kilim professionally cleaned when needed — never machine wash.

Count the borders on this one — eight or nine deep on every side, each carrying its own repeat, so the framing takes up nearly as much of the rug as the field it surrounds. That is not decoration for its own sake. On a flatweave the edges take the most strain, and a weaver who intends a piece to last builds the borders out in depth, using the extra rows to strengthen the sides as well as to fill them. The field itself is banded rather than open, with small birds worked in among the diamonds and combs if you look closely enough. Rose red carries the whole thing, with orange and indigo doing the work that a medallion would do elsewhere — giving the eye somewhere to land.