Care
How to look after a carpet that will outlive you
Hand-knotted wool is far tougher than people fear and far easier to ruin in one specific way. Here is the whole of it.
Amina Haddad2 min read
Read itThe Journal
Everything we would tell you across the counter
No trends, no styling tips. How these carpets are made, how to judge one, and how to keep it alive for the next hundred years.
Buying
The back of the rug tells you everything the front will not
Turn it over in the shop. Thirty seconds on the reverse will tell you more about what you are being sold than an hour of sales talk.
Daniel Okonjo2 min read
Craft
Knot counts, and the point at which they stop mattering
The single most quoted number in the trade is genuinely useful, right up until it is used to sell you the wrong carpet.
Amina Haddad2 min read
Craft
Madder, indigo, and why the old dyes came back
Synthetic dye nearly finished off the carpet trade in the 1870s. The recovery took a century and is the reason your rug will age well.
Daniel Okonjo2 min read
Buying
Getting the size right, which is where most people go wrong
The commonest mistake in buying a carpet is not colour or pattern. It is buying one two sizes too small.
Priya Raman2 min read
Provenance
Why we put a person's name on every label
Almost nobody in this trade does. The reasons they give for not doing it are worth examining.
Priya Raman1 min read