Jade Green and Cream Compartment Bokhara, Hand-Knotted Wool and Silk Rug

Hand-knotted from wool with silk to the 9/18 quality, with a natural fringe at both ends. The figures give knots per inch in each direction across the width first and down the length second, so the grid here is twice as fine vertically as horizontally. The silk carries the fine hooked edges of the lattice and the small stepped detail inside each diamond, and gives the green ground a lustre that shifts as you move around the rug.

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. A mid-toned green ground is reasonably practical, but the cream lattice is the vulnerable part: it runs across the whole rug and carries a good share of the surface, so it will show soiling before the green does.

There is really only one motif on this rug, and it has been used twice in two different roles. Inside each hexagonal compartment sits a stepped diamond in cream and tan with a pale green heart — that is the emblem, and it reads as figure against the green ground around it. Then look at the points where the cream lattice bands cross. Sitting on the lattice itself is the same diamond again, the same shape and very nearly the same drawing, except that now it is surrounded by cream rather than green and reads not as a figure at all but as a knot tying the lattice together.

Using one shape for both jobs is an economical piece of design and a slightly disorienting one. Follow the green compartments and the rug looks like a field of medallions on a net. Follow the cream lattice instead and it looks like a net of medallions holding pools of green. Neither reading is wrong, and the rug will flip between them while you look at it — which is a great deal of interest to get from repeating a single diamond. The narrow proportion helps: at 203 by 231 centimetres this is close to square, so neither direction dominates and the lattice reads equally in both.