Crimson Turkmen Gül Khal Mohammadi Rug, Hand-Knotted Wool

100% hand-spun Afghan wool, naturally rich in lanolin, which gives it softness, a subtle sheen and a natural resistance to everyday dirt and spills. Hand-knotted in northern Afghanistan with an ivory fringe at both ends.

About as forgiving a rug as this catalogue holds. Two-tenths of one per cent of the surface is pale enough to count as neutral, so there is essentially nothing on it to mark, and the borders are woven deeper still than the field. The rose inside the güls is the one vulnerable colour and it is also the one carrying all their internal drawing. The ivory fringe will show soiling long before any of the pile does.

Measure the gül lattice and it comes out at 14.02cm across by 9.24cm down. Divide the field by those figures and the two answers behave quite differently. Across the width, 154.6cm of field divided by a 14.02cm pitch gives 11.02 columns — within a fiftieth of a whole number. Down the length, 247.0cm divided by a 9.24cm pitch gives 26.72, and the last course is left three-quarters finished.

That difference is not carelessness; it follows from how a rug is made. The width of a carpet is fixed before a single knot is tied — the warps are strung on the loom and cannot be added to — so the weaver can size the emblem to divide that width exactly, and here has, to a fraction of one per cent. The length is the opposite: it accumulates row by row and ends when the rug is long enough or the wool runs out, so there is no reason for it to land on a whole emblem and it rarely does. The rug is a record of both decisions. One dimension was planned in advance and solved arithmetically; the other was simply woven until it was done.