Deep Red and Cream Arabesque Lattice, Hand-Knotted Wool and Silk Rug

Hand-knotted from wool with silk at a fine gauge. The silk carries the highlights in the palmettes and the lattice bands, and it is what gives the sage-grey vine its slight shift in tone as you move past it. It also means the rug should be treated as a silk piece rather than a wool one for cleaning.

Wool and silk shrink at different rates, so this rug must never be washed, steamed or shampooed — any deep clean is a job for a specialist in mixed-fibre rugs. The cream in the border is the most vulnerable colour, and on a runner it frames the exact line a foot takes down a corridor.

The organising idea here is a lattice, and it is worth tracing before looking at anything else. Broad sage-grey vine bands sweep up and out into tall pointed ovals — ogees — and where four of them meet, a small circular rosette sits over the junction like a rivet. Follow one band with a finger and it does not end: it curves into the next ogee and the next, so the whole field is one continuous interlace rather than a set of separate frames.

Inside each compartment sits a large palmette with curling gold arms, and the ground around it is packed with split-leaf arabesques and small blossoms. This is the descendant of the great Safavid medallion carpets, in which interlocking compartments took the place of a single central medallion — the reason a design like this has no centre and needs none. It also suits a runner unusually well: a rug with one medallion has a right place to stand and looks wrong anywhere else, whereas a lattice can be cut to any length and still look complete, which is exactly what a corridor asks of it.