Mint and Apricot, Before Breakfast
Green the colour of the first leaves,
peach the colour of the sky before the sun,
and diamonds between them,
set down lightly, like a table being laid.
Nobody expects green from Boujad. Pinks, yes, oranges, reds; but here is a weaver who woke one morning around 1980 and wanted the colours of the garden in April instead, and made a rug in mint and apricot and cream, with a field of open diamonds drawn in green over a ground that shifts from peach to pale orange like a sunrise seen from a kitchen. It is a cheerful rug without being a loud one, which is the rarest kind.
Forty years have softened everything into everything else, so the mint and the peach now meet in the middle rather than contrast. The pile is two centimetres and the rug lies calm and flat. It is made for a breakfast room, a bright bedroom, a kitchen with a long table, anywhere the day begins.
Handwoven rugs grow in beauty, memory, and value with every passing year.