Salmon and Mauve Jaldar Diamond Gül, Hand-Knotted Wool and Silk Rug

Hand-knotted from wool with silk, with a natural fringe at both ends. The silk is what makes this rug work: with the palette held within a single tonal range, the lustre of the silk-blended yarn is doing the job that colour contrast would normally do, separating the drawing from the ground by how it catches the light.

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 borders is the most vulnerable colour, and on a runner only 61 centimetres wide the whole width takes traffic.

This is the most tonally restrained rug you are likely to see in this design. Measured across the whole surface, ninety per cent of it falls into a single orange-gold band — the salmon ground, the mauve of the diamonds, the rust in the borders, all of them variations on one warm range separated by depth rather than by hue. Only about five per cent sits outside it, in the small red accents.

Working that narrowly puts the weight on the silk. With no colour contrast to define the diamonds, what separates them from the ground is the way the silk-blended yarn takes the light: the drawing lifts and falls as you move past it or as the daylight shifts, and from certain angles the medallions almost vanish into the field before returning. A rug built on strong colour contrast looks the same from everywhere; this one does not. Walk the length of it and watch the diamonds come and go — that movement is the design, and it is the reason the palette was kept this tight.