Sage and Cream Concentric Floral Round, Hand-Knotted Wool and Silk Rug

Ghazni wool ground with a silk pattern, hand-knotted, with a fine fringe following the full circumference. A mixed-fibre rug needs to be treated as the more delicate of its two materials: care for this one as you would a silk rug, not a wool one.

The pale palette shows marks readily, and a silk-faced pile shades and tracks wherever it is walked on — normal, and it brushes back out. A round rug also needs a round pad or one cut to shape; a rectangular pad will show as ridges under the curved edges.

You cannot make a round rug by taking a rectangular design and cutting a circle out of it. A rectangular field has an orientation — a top and a bottom, motifs that stand upright, a border that turns four corners — and cropping it to a circle leaves half the design lying on its side and the border sliced through. This one has been set out for the shape from the start: the floral is arranged concentrically, so it reads correctly whichever side you approach from, and the border is a continuous band following the curve with no corners to turn at all. In a dining room, where people sit all the way round, that is the difference between a rug that works and one that only looks right from the doorway. The second thing is the fibre. The pattern is silk and the ground is wool, close in tone but opposite in surface — silk reflects, wool absorbs — so the floral lifts and sinks as you move. It is why the rug photographs flat and does not look flat in a room.