Wool Left the Colour of the Sheep
No dye pot out where the road ends,
only the flock, and what it gave.
Cream from the ewes, brown from the ram,
and the wind to card it.
Past the last town, out towards Figuig and the Algerian border, there is a high, stony country where the Ait Bou Ichaouen pitched their tents and followed the grazing, and dye was a thing you traded for in town, twice a year if you were lucky. So most of what they wove was the colour of the sheep. This rug is that: cream from the ewes, brown from the darker animals, knotted long and loose in the Talsint way, with two centimetres of shaggy wool, because a tent floor on that plateau needs to be warm more than neat. The drawing across it is sparse and sure.
Talsint rugs are rare and most never leave the region. This one has worn well, soft and thick, with honest signs of its tent years in the photos. It lives now in the entrance hall of a Milan apartment, on grey terrazzo under a single pendant lamp, the first thing a visitor sees and the only soft thing in the hall.
Handwoven rugs grow in beauty, memory, and value with every passing year.