NEW 398 × 395 cm Hand-Knotted Erami Qom Silk Rug “Seven Heavens – Blue” | 15.72 m² | 71.8 Raj | 16,646,400 knots | 100% silk

Erami Qom silk, “Seven Heavens – Blue”, 398 x 395 cm

An almost exactly square piece, 398 x 395 cm, covering 15.72 square metres and carrying 16,646,400 knots at 71.8 Raj. Every one of those knots was tied by hand in silk.

The scale of the work

The knot count is worth pausing on. Sixteen and a half million individual knots, on a piece of this size, at close to 72 Raj, is not a quantity that can be hurried. Square formats are also harder to weave than long ones: the loom tension has to hold across a much wider span, and any drift in the drawing shows immediately, because the eye has two axes of symmetry to check it against.

Design

“Seven Heavens” is the workshop name for this drawing, here in its blue colourway. Silk across a field this large behaves almost like water: the surface changes tone along its width as the light crosses it, so the blue is never one flat colour.

Placement and care

Nearly four metres square, this is a rug for a large reception room, and it wants to be seen whole rather than crowded with furniture. Avoid sustained direct sunlight, vacuum gently without a beater bar, and rotate it once or twice a year.