A Field Seen Through Rain
Raspberry where the sun was,
violet where the cloud went over.
The lattice almost gone,
the way a view goes soft in weather.
Stand back from this one and the lattice nearly disappears. What is left is a wash of raspberry and violet, rose where the wool has caught the most light, like a hillside seen through a window in rain. The weaver drew her diamonds the way all Beni M'Guild women do, but she drew them faintly, in a colour only one shade away from the ground, so the rug would be about the colour and not the drawing. That was a brave choice forty years ago. It looks like a painting now.
The pile has softened to two centimetres and the surface has a silk in it that only decades of walking give. It wants a quiet room: pale plaster, one good chair, a window. Put it there and the room will seem to have been waiting for it.
Handwoven rugs grow in beauty, memory, and value with every passing year.