Red Cartouche Medallion

100% silk pile, hand-knotted, with the sides overcast in red and 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.

The red medallion and the navy border are forgiving of small marks; the ivory corners are not, and they sit at exactly the points a hand or a foot reaches first. Red silk next to ivory is also the combination most at risk if the rug ever gets wet, which is the main reason to keep it where drinks will not be set down on it.

Most people look at the medallion first, but the border is worth a closer look. Find one of the red palmettes on the navy ground, then trace the thin red line that leaves it. It does not stop at the next motif: it steps out around each palmette, closes back in, and carries on, so a single line runs unbroken along all four sides of the rug, enclosing every palmette as it goes. That one line is what turns a row of separate ornaments into a border, and it is harder to weave than it looks. Every palmette has to be spaced so the line arrives at the corner on time, because a line that runs out of room partway along a side cannot be hidden. The navy ground behind it matters too: it is the darkest colour on the rug, so it frames the red medallion and the ivory corners from outside and makes both read brighter than they would on a pale border.