Wheat Gold and Rose Jaldar Alternating Medallion, Hand-Knotted Wool and Silk Rug

Hand-knotted from wool with silk, with a natural fringe at both ends. The silk carries the highlights in the medallions and the vine work, and it is what gives the wheat gold ground its shift in tone as you move along the rug. It also means the rug must be treated as a silk piece rather than a wool one for cleaning.

Wool and silk shrink at different rates, so this rug should never be washed, steamed or shampooed — any deep clean is a job for a specialist in mixed-fibre rugs. A wheat gold ground is also less forgiving than a dark one: the open gold between the medallions has little pattern to disguise a mark. On a runner of this length wear concentrates heavily at the busier end, so rotating end to end matters more than usual.

The medallions down this rug are not all the same, and they are not randomly varied either — they alternate. A large one comes first: a dusty rose lozenge with cloud-band arms curling out to either side, palmettes hanging above and below it, and a stepped diamond at its core. Then a small one, a plain stepped diamond with none of the surrounding apparatus. Then a large one again, and so on down the full thirteen feet.

The effect is a long-short rhythm rather than an even march, and on a runner that is worth something specific. A column of identical medallions measures the rug out in equal steps, and the eye counts them like paving slabs. Alternating two sizes gives the same column a cadence — a stress and an unstress — so it reads as moving rather than as marking time. It also lets the weaver fill a very long field without the pattern becoming monotonous, which over four metres is a real problem to solve. Start at either end and check: you should always find a small medallion between any two large ones, never two of a kind together.