Oat and Ash on the High Ground
Oats in the one flat field, ash in the hearth,
the two greys of a mountain year.
She had no need of the dye pot.
The land had done it.
There is one flat field above the village where the oats grow, pale gold going to grey by September, and there is the hearth, where the cedar burns down each night to ash. Between those two colours the Beni M'Guild live their winters, and this rug was tied in them. It is undyed, oat and ash and the warm brown of the darker sheep, with the lattice spaced wide so that the field breathes. It is a big piece, nearly three and a half metres, the pile worn to a soft, even nap over forty winters, and heavy enough to lie flat and stay where it is put.
The quiet Beni M'Guild rugs are the ones the modernists fell for, and you can see why: nothing in them argues with a room. This one lives now in a mews house in London, on pale limestone under a long linen sofa, and it makes the room look as if someone had thought about it for a very long time.
Handwoven rugs grow in beauty, memory, and value with every passing year.