Reading a Classic Rug: Medallion, Field, Border

Traditional rug design is not decoration applied at random. It has a grammar, and once you can read it the rugs become much more interesting.

The field

The main ground of the rug. It can be open — a single colour with sparse motifs — or filled edge to edge with repeating pattern. An open field reads as formal and calm; a filled field reads as rich and busy, and hides more.

The medallion

The central form. It descends from Persian bookbinding of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, where the same shape appears on the covers of illuminated manuscripts. Court weavers and book illuminators worked in the same workshops under the same patrons, and the motif crossed over.

A medallion centres a room, which is why medallion rugs sit so naturally under a coffee table or a dining table.

The spandrels

The quarter-medallion shapes in the four corners. They echo the central medallion and imply that the field is a window onto a larger repeating pattern extending beyond the rug.

The border

Almost always a wide main border between two or more narrow guard stripes. The border frames the field and, practically, is where a weaver could correct accumulated drift in the pattern. A rug with a confident, well-turned border corner is a well-drawn rug — the corners are the hardest part to resolve and the first place to look at quality.

What to look for

Symmetry that is not quite perfect. Hand-drawn traditional design has small irregularities, and those irregularities are what stop a classic rug looking like wallpaper.