Discovered in the back of my linen closet: a handwoven rug purchased years ago. Source unknown. The weave is a type of warp repp. The yarns are cheap, the construction sleazy, but what attracted me to the rug was the structure, and I think in better yarns it would make an interesting project for six shafts. The warp should be relatively fine and closely sett to cover the weft, and the weft should alternate thick, thin, and repeat (reading the treadling from bottom to top, which is the way it would be woven). In my analysis, a plain weave selvedge is threaded on shafts 1 &2, block B on shafts 3 & 4, and block A on shafts 5 & 6. The original rug is mostly plain weave with occasional blocks of A and B woven intermittently.
As you can see, alternating colors in the warp adds greatly to the visual complexity of this rug, and having warp color changes occur in the middle of the blocks adds further interest. Also fascinating is the way the heavier wefts are deflected around the blocks in the plain weave area.
If anyone has any information about where this rug might have been woven (India, perhaps?), I’d love to hear about it.
