Clementines on a January Table
Snow to the lintel, and on the low table
a bowl of clementines, the only colour for miles.
She dyed the wool to match them
and the room has been warm ever since.
In the deep of a Middle Atlas January the only colour inside a house might be a bowl of clementines brought up from the valley. This rug is that colour, boiled into twenty kilos of wool and knotted two fingers deep across almost four metres, with darker lines running through the orange like the shadows between the fruit. The Beni M'Guild weave for warmth first; beauty comes with it, as it does when a thing is made with care for people you love. It kept a family off the cold floor through decades of winters, and the use shows only as softness, the orange rubbed to the warmth of a clementine's skin rather than its shine.
Give it a room with grey stone or dark floorboards and a lot of daylight. One leather chair, a plant in a clay pot, and the floor becomes the reason to come home.
Handwoven rugs grow in beauty, memory, and value with every passing year.