Walnut Husks in the Dye Pot
October, the walnuts down and the husks going black.
Her hands stained for a week.
A brown no shop could sell her,
knotted fine as handwriting.
The brown in an old Beni M'Guild rug is rarely the sheep's own. It comes from walnut husks, gathered in October when the nuts drop and the green casings split and blacken on the ground, soaked for days in the big pot until the water is the colour of strong coffee and the hands that stir it are stained to the wrist for a week after. It is a slow brown and a deep one. This rug is that brown, laid down in a field of fine, close knotting with lighter and darker lines moving across it, and the fineness is the point. She was not in a hurry. The knots are small and even in a way that takes a lifetime of looms to learn.
Forty years of use have brought the pile down to a finger's width, which is what shows the drawing off, and the whole surface has the quiet of a thing that was made well. It lives in a study now, with a leather chair and a wall of books, and it is the colour the room was waiting for.
Handwoven rugs grow in beauty, memory, and value with every passing year.