Brick Red Turkmen Gül Rug, Hand-Knotted Sherwan

100% hand-spun Afghan wool, naturally rich in lanolin, which gives it softness, a subtle sheen and a natural resistance to everyday dirt and spills. Hand-knotted in northern Afghanistan with a cream fringe at both ends and a woven elem panel at the lower end.

This is an unusually forgiving rug to live with, because there is almost no pale wool in it to mark. Measured across the whole surface, under half a per cent sits below the threshold where a colour reads as neutral — even the light quarters of the güls, which look cream at a distance, are a peach at four-tenths saturation rather than an ivory. A brick red ground hides everyday soiling well, and the deep wine and near-black of the borders hide it better still. The elem panel is the part to watch: its pale diagonals are the lightest thing on the rug and it sits at an end, where feet arrive.

Measure the two ends of this rug and they do not match. The upper end finishes with about 30cm of border and stops. The lower end runs to 43.6cm, because after the band of rosette roundels it adds a further 22.6cm of bold diagonal lattice — ivory, red and navy barber-pole stripes crossing into a trellis, a design that appears nowhere else on the rug. The side borders are near enough identical at 24.1 and 22.3cm, so this is not the weaving drifting. It is deliberate.

That panel is the elem, the skirt of a Turkmen carpet. On the tent-dwelling weavings this design descends from, the elem was the section that lay beyond the sitting area or hung clear of the floor, and it was given its own vocabulary rather than a continuation of the field. What it means practically is that the rug has an orientation. Most all-over gül designs are indifferent to which way round they lie — the pattern repeats, so either end will do. This one does not repeat at the ends, and where you put the elem is a decision: nearest the door, at the foot of a bed, or facing into the room where it will be seen. It also means that turning the rug end for end to even out wear will visibly change the room, which is not true of the symmetrical rugs woven alongside it.