Coral Hooked Jaldar

100% wool pile, hand-knotted in Pakistan, with ivory fringe at both ends. Wool is naturally resilient and hard-wearing, and the dense pile of a Jaldar is made for everyday floor use.

The coral field is plain between the güls and will show vacuum tracks and pile shading — it looks lighter or darker depending on which way the pile has been brushed. Coral is also a mid-tone that shows fading from strong sunlight more readily than the dark borders around it.

Run a finger around the outline of any of the four güls on this rug and it will not find a smooth edge anywhere. Each diamond is fringed with small hooks and teeth, and the half-diamonds reaching in from both sides of the field carry exactly the same serrated outline. Hooked edges like these come from the Turkmen weaving tradition that the Jaldar design descends from, where a plain outline was rarely left plain: hooks were added to make a shape look alive against its ground. Here they do something more. Because the güls and the side motifs all bristle towards each other, the coral ground left between them is pinched into a zigzag channel that runs from one end of the field to the other. Stand at the end of the rug and look down its length, and it is that channel of plain coral — not the güls — that the eye follows.