Fresh Snow, Nearly Square
No dye pot at all this time.
The wool as the sheep gave it, cream and warm,
a few brown lines like branches,
and a floor the shape of a room.
High in the Middle Atlas, where the Beni Ourain keep their sheep, the best rugs are the ones that were never dyed. The cream is the fleece as it came off the animal, washed in the river and spun by hand, and the only drawing is done in the brown wool of the darker sheep: a few lines, a lozenge or two, the way bare branches sit against snow. This one is nearly square, two and a half metres each way, which is rare and useful, and it has the deep, springy pile the Beni Ourain are loved for, two centimetres of wool that feels like walking on a sheep's back. Forty years of a mountain house have made it softer still and given the cream the warmth of old linen.
The modernists put these under their steel chairs, and the instinct still holds: in a square room with one good chair and a lot of light, this is all the floor needs.
Handwoven rugs grow in beauty, memory, and value with every passing year.