Hand Woven

A hand woven rug has no pile: the weft yarn runs over and under the warp, and that interlacing is the surface you see. Most of the rugs in this collection are flatweaves of that kind, thin, light and often usable on either side, with a smaller number of woven rugs that carry a short surface. Nothing here comes off a machine; the weavers work the looms by hand, most of them in India.

Wool makes up about half of the group, with cotton, jute and recycled yarn behind it, and the designs lean transitional and farmhouse: stripes, diamonds, trellis and plain solids rather than medallions. Runners are everywhere here, on more than half the designs.

Weaving Versus Knotting

Weaving and knotting are different jobs. A knotted rug gets its surface from knots tied on and cut; a woven rug gets it from the yarn itself, interlaced row by row, so there is no pile to crush and nothing to shed. That makes a hand woven rug the lightest handmade construction to lift, roll and ship, and the easiest to shake out. Most here have no pile at all, and a few carry a short pile woven in. Because nothing is glued underneath, the rug stays supple and can be turned over when one side has had more sun or more feet. Shoppers after the dense, heavy alternative with a pile can step over to the hand knotted rugs, which take longer to make and cost more.

Four Fibers, One Weave

About half of these rugs are wool, woven thick enough that the flat surface still has some give, and wool holds its color well in a weave. Cotton, on a few, gives a soft flatweave that suits a bedroom or the spot beside a bath. Jute, on a few more, is the scratchy natural fiber of a sisal-style rug; water is its enemy. Recycled PET yarn, spun from plastic bottles, is woven into a few as well; it shrugs off stains and wipes clean, which is why it tends to end up in a kitchen. Each fiber has its own page across every construction: handmade wool rugs for the warm half, cotton rugs for the soft ones, jute rugs for the natural look.

Beige and Gray, Woven In Rather Than Printed On

Half the rugs here are beige, with gray, white, ivory and charcoal filling most of the rest, so the shelf reads neutral; the neutral rugs page is where every neutral in the store lives, woven or not. On a flatweave the color sits in the yarn, not on a surface, so a stripe or a diamond stays crisp as the rug wears and shows just as clearly on the reverse. Solid, striped and trellis designs are the patterns that recur here.

Thin Enough for Doors, Light Enough to Move

A flatweave is the thinnest rug you can put down, which is why more than half the designs here come as a runner: a hallway, a galley kitchen or the strip in front of a sink takes one without a door ever catching. The 2x3 and 3x5 sizes, gathered on the small rugs page, do the same job at a mudroom door or beside a bath. For rooms, the 5x7 is the size most of these designs offer, enough for a home office or the floor beside a bed, and the 8x10 rugs cover a living room seating group on about half the designs; a 9x12 is there on some for a dining table or a larger room.

Transitional and Farmhouse, Mostly

Transitional and farmhouse looks each run through about half of this collection, often on the same rug: a washed stripe or a low-contrast diamond that works in a modern room and a country kitchen alike. Those sit on the farmhouse rugs page too. A few are contemporary or bohemian, and a few lean Scandinavian, where the plainness of a flatweave is the whole point.

Care for a Flatweave

Vacuum a flatweave on suction alone, and vacuum the floor under it now and then, since grit falls straight through a rug with no pile. Turn it over once in a while if the design runs through to the reverse, so both sides wear at the same rate. Deeper cleaning of wool or jute is a job for a rug cleaner; a washing machine is only for the handful of pieces whose tag says so. A thin pad underneath stops a flatweave from creeping on a hard floor.