A Hand's Depth of Cream
Undyed, the wool as it came off the sheep.
Brown lines, as few as she could manage.
Four fingers deep, so that lying down
felt like falling upward.
The Beni Ourain do not dye. Their sheep give a cream wool so good that colour would be a kind of insult, and the only dark in their rugs is the brown of the one black sheep in every flock, spun separately and kept for the lines. This rug was knotted four centimetres deep, which is deeper than most, the kind of pile you make when the rug is going to be slept on, not walked across. The lozenges are open and few. She drew them the way you draw on a frosted window, lightly, knowing they would not last.
The wool is still astonishingly soft. The cream has warmed to the colour of old paper, the brown lines have held, and the pile springs back after a hand is pressed into it. It is the rug the modernists put under their steel chairs, and it still does that job: a pale room, one leather and chrome chair, and this cloud on the floor.
Handwoven rugs grow in beauty, memory, and value with every passing year.