Salmon Starburst Qum

100% silk pile, hand-knotted in Qum, with silk fringe at both ends and a 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 salmon field is a soft, light ground with no dark areas to hide a mark, and the deep red roses of the border sit close to both the field and the pale fringe — the combination most at risk if the rug ever gets wet. It belongs somewhere it will be looked at rather than walked on.

The medallion at the centre of this rug is a shamseh — the Persian word for a little sun — and it comes from the illuminated manuscripts of Iran, where a radiating golden sun often opened the first page of a book. Look at how it is built: a gold starburst at the heart, then a quiet ring of blue-grey scrollwork, then a crown of narrow pointed petals in red and gold radiating outward like rays. The small flowers of the salmon field seem to drift outward from it too, which is what gives the rug its sense of light spreading from the centre. The border takes an entirely different approach. Instead of a formal repeating pattern, it is a loose garland of big, naturalistic red roses — full-petalled, shaded, with leaves and buds — that grows around the rug and turns each corner on its largest bloom. The classical sun at the centre and the garden roses around the edge are two very different ways of drawing a flower, set on one small rug.