Ivory Boteh Qum

100% silk pile, hand-knotted in Qum, with short 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 open ivory field is the part to protect. It covers the centre of the rug with very little drawing on it, so a mark has nothing to hide behind, and the deep red of the botehs and border sits right against it. At 100×147cm the rug can go on a floor, but a floor people cross in socks rather than shoes, and away from where drinks are carried.

The boteh — the teardrop with a curled tip that the West knows as paisley — is usually a small motif, repeated in rows across a field or tucked into a border. This rug does the opposite. Compare the largest boteh in any corner with the star medallion at the centre: they are close to the same size, so the motif that normally plays a supporting part here takes up a full quarter of the field. At that scale the weaver could fill each one like a panel, with its own inner flowers and a lining of gold, and could let smaller botehs sprout from its curves the way new leaves come off a stem. The ivory ground is left almost empty between them, which is what lets the shapes read clearly from across a room. Then look at direction: every large boteh curls its tip back towards the medallion, so the four corners lean in rather than out, and the open centre of the rug is held by the corners rather than by a frame.