Ivory Vinescroll Qum

100% silk pile, hand-knotted in Qum, with silk fringe at both ends and a small signature cartouche in the border at one end. 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.

The ivory field and ivory border are the largest areas of colour on the rug and both show marks readily. The raspberry-red outer band sits right against the pale fringe, which is where any colour movement from water would show first. This is a rug for a wall, a bedside or a table rather than a floor.

This field is drawn in two sizes of stem, and seeing the difference is the key to reading it. First find the thick brown vines: there are only a few of them, and they make large, slow S-curves around the navy medallion, one set in each quarter of the field. They carry almost no flowers themselves. Then look at the fine stems branching off them: these are thin, quick and covered in small red, blue and sage blossoms. The thick stems are the skeleton of the design — they set the rhythm and the symmetry — and the fine ones are the foliage hung on it. Because the skeleton is drawn in a single warm brown, you can trace the whole structure of the field at a glance, while the flowers fill in the colour without ever blurring the plan. The navy medallion and the navy corners sit at the ends of those big curves, which is why the field feels anchored at five points rather than just one.