Duschelmat | 204 cm x 114 cm | Nr. 20680

Duschelmat, dark red with border and medallion

Origin	Persia
Dimensions	204 cm x 114 cm (= 2.33 m²)
Construction	hand-knotted
Material	Pile: wool (hand-spun, natural dyes) Weft: cotton Warp: wool
knots per m²2	120.000
Pile height	4mm
Year of manufacture	1965
Colour	Dark red, dark blue
Edition	one-of-a-kind piece

Origin

This Duschelmat rug belongs to the family of Caucasian rugs. Rugs have been made in the Caucasus since the end of the 18th century. Typical of them are abstract geometric tribal patterns in muted ochre tones.

Pattern

The decorated surround (border) forms a beautiful contrast to the centre and shapes the transition at the edge of the rug.

At the heart of this Duschelmat's central field lies the symmetrical centre, also known as the medallion. The design of the field is subordinate to the medallion, so that the medallion seems to float on the field.

The background of this Duschelmat is dark red. The border is worked in dark blue and olive green.

Condition

This Duschelmat has had admirers before you. In places the pile has grown a little thinner. It was hand-knotted around 1965. We have cleaned it thoroughly and restored it with care. That's why – despite its age – it is in very good condition.

Material

The technique used to produce the materials for the pile of this Duschelmat is over 200 years old. The wool was dyed with natural dyes and spun by hand. Dyeing with natural or plant-based dyes is more complicated, more expensive and more time-consuming than dyeing with chemical colours. For a luminous red, for example, you need around one kilo of ground madder root as dyestuff per kilo of wool. For a strong yellow that isn't too pale, you even need two kilograms of the dyestuff weld per kilo of wool. Spinning the wool is labour-intensive and time-consuming too. On top of that, fewer and fewer people still know how to spin wool by hand.

But the effort is worth it: dyeing with natural colours lets the high-quality wool keep its natural lanolin content. Wool that is naturally dyed and hand-spun creates fascinating, shifting patterns. The charm of hand-spun wool, with its slight irregularities and natural shades, comes into its own as a contrast in modern interiors, but equally in rooms furnished in a more traditional or country-house style. The weft threads of this Duschelmat are made of cotton. Wool was used for the warp threads.