Rugs are people, too

In my last update on the conversation pit project, I mentioned that the sitting area would be built around a thickly padded rug. The rug has both important functional and aesthetic responsibilities, so I spent much of this week researching and shopping for rugs.

I wanted an “Oriental” rug with a complex design and multiple distinct colors. The conversation pit is being built around the rug, and it should serve as a visual centerpiece. This eliminated a lot of mass-market rugs, since the fashion is much more oriented towards solid colors and geometric designs; many of the remaining Oriental-styled rugs at Pottery Barn were either faux-distressed or overdyed in single bright colors.

I also wanted a rug that would be well-made. I’m not intending for this rug to be an heirloom or anything, but I want something that didn’t feel “disposable.” Though I don’t have any particular feelings about whether the rug is hand- or machine-made, my research warned me off of tufted rugs , which eliminated most of the remaining Pottery Barn options.

I ended up doing most of my shopping on Revival Rugs, which mostly sells vintage handmade Turkish rugs. Here are some of the rugs I found most affecting:

Gederts

A bit large for the space (I was looking for something around 5’ x 8’) but I like the busy-ness of the vine motif.

Salama

Great vivid colors; quite janky, but in a charming way.

Bromley

Wonderfully hypnotic pattern. Perhaps too muted in color and design to work as a centerpiece.

Lilianne

Good pattern with strong central medallion; probably too muted in color. Also, though this would be no harder to clean than any other wool rug, just looking at it makes me anxious about spilling something on it.

Peegen

They have a lot of rugs with this lozenge-shaped design which doesn’t really do it for me, but the navy blue on the mostly light-colored rug is quite striking.

Iacobina

Great tree of life motif here.

Remon

This is the one that made me understand why the rugs all have names. An anonymous rug that looks like this is a consumed good; a rug like this named Remon is old and frail, but still noble. You know, like Gus, the Theatre Cat.

But this is the one I got:

Lobar

The dusty rose & sage color scheme is restrained, but vivid. The pattern is complex but is not afraid of negative space. The fractal ornamentation on the lozenge and the frame round it off such that it looks like the enormous eye of an ancient creature.