Stubble Fields in Low Sun
October, the barley cut, the field gone gold-grey,
shadows a mile long at five o'clock.
Four metres of floor
for a house that had earned it.
In October the barley is cut on the high fields and the stubble goes a pale gold-grey that catches the low sun for an hour before dark, when every stalk throws a shadow and the slope looks combed. This rug is nearly four metres long and it has that field in it. Undyed, cream and brown, with the lattice stretched the length of the piece, it was made for the main room of a house that had done well, where the family ate and the guests were seated and, in the hardest weeks of winter, where everyone slept. Twenty kilos of wool. You do not weave a rug like this for yourself; you weave it for a household.
The pile has gone low with the years, a centimetre now, soft and even, and the wear is honest and in the photos. It lives now in a house by the sea with a long white room and a wall of glass, under a table that seats twelve, and looks as if it had always been there.
Handwoven rugs grow in beauty, memory, and value with every passing year.