Taupe and Rose Saf Prayer Design, Hand-Knotted Wool Rug

100% wool pile, hand-knotted, with a natural fringe at both ends. At this size the rug is light enough to lift and shake out, which is the easiest way to keep it clean.

A mid-toned taupe ground hides everyday marks reasonably well. The cream in the lamps and the border repeats is the vulnerable colour — it is the palest thing on the rug and the first to grey. If the rug is hung rather than laid, keep it out of direct light, since the crimson and rose niches will fade at different rates from the teal ones and the alternation is the point of the design.

A single prayer rug carries one pointed niche — a mihrab — and the person using it kneels facing the point. This rug carries a whole row of them, one after another down its length, each with its own ground colour and its own hanging lamp. That form has a name: a saf, a communal prayer rug, woven so that several people can use it at once. Each niche is a place.

The detail that confirms it is the direction. Every arch on this rug points across the width, not along the length — so the row of niches runs left to right in front of you while everyone using it faces the same way, shoulder to shoulder. A rug meant for one person would have its single niche pointing along the length instead. Check any two arches on this one and you will find them parallel, never opposed. The lamp hanging inside each niche is the other standard element: it stands for the lamp of a mosque, and here it has been drawn slightly differently in each compartment rather than copied exactly, which is worth looking for once you have seen the first one.