Vintage Adana kilim rug - 287 x 170 cm

Seventy years ago, somewhere in the plain of Adana, a nomadic family was setting up its camp for the season, and bringing out two narrow, portable looms, the kind one folds and loads onto the back of a mule at the first signal of departure. This is how this kilim was born, woven in two separate panels, one after the other, perhaps weeks apart, before being sewn together with a care that, even today, is barely detectable. Four large medallions mark the rhythm of this journey through time, mauve and plum at the outset, then fuchsia pink, peach and coral, and finally a last, darker motif, brown and sage green, like the end of a road travelled.

The ground shifts in tone at each stage, magenta, garnet, rust, that variation which belongs only to wools dyed by hand, bath by bath, never twice the same. Across its 287 x 170 cm (9'5" × 5'7"), this kilim does not merely dress a floor, it brings back to you a fragment of that vanished encampment, and once laid down, one understands one would never have let it leave.

One of a kind.