Ivory and Deep Red Tabriz Cloud Band Medallion, Hand-Knotted Wool and Silk Rug

Hand-knotted from wool with silk, with a natural fringe at both ends. The silk carries the fine detail — the radiating petals of the medallion and the smooth curve of each cloud band, both of which need a crisp edge at a few millimetres across — and gives the ivory ground its shifting sheen.

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 ivory field is the vulnerable part: it is the palest thing here and makes up most of the surface.

Scattered through the field, among the palmettes and leaves, are a set of forms that do not belong to any plant. They are smooth curled ribbons, pale grey, tapering at both ends, with no stem attaching them to anything and no serration along their edges — look for a crescent shape lying on its side and you will find several. These are cloud bands, and they are the oldest borrowing in the Persian design vocabulary.

They arrived from China, carried west on silk during the Mongol period, and Persian weavers absorbed them so completely that they now read as native. What gives them away is exactly what you can see here: everything else in the field grows — stems connect, leaves attach, flowers sit on something — while a cloud band simply floats. It is also the only cool grey on a rug otherwise built from ivory, gold, coral and red, so once you have found one the rest come easily. That combination of a Chinese motif, a Persian layout and a Turkish workshop name is not unusual in this trade; it is the ordinary condition of a design that has been travelling for seven hundred years.