I love it when you tell me what kind of rug you are looking for~ whether it be a specific color palette you are designing around, a hard-to-find narrow runner to fit that skinny hallway in your vintage home, or the elusive and rare square rug. Square rugs have maybe been the hardest to find of them all- and when I do get them, they tend to sell out almost immediately. Square or square-ish rugs are perfect for so many spaces, like dining rooms with round tables, stair landings, entryways or that awkward little nook that needs something cozy on the floor to make you feel like spending time there…

Traditional hand-knotted and woven rugs were and still are almost always made in rectangular formats to match standard nomadic looms and common room shapes. These more slender vertical looms accommodate weavers sitting side-by-side, taking up less space and being easier to travel with for nomadic weavers. Weaving a true square rug requires custom loom adjustments and complex pattern recalculations, making rectangular formats the default choice. Central medallions and complex border layouts have to be completely re-mapped to fit equal sides rather than a more classic stretched perspective. And, only a few master weavers or workshops bothered with the specialized geometry required for a balanced square rug. If square rugs were made, they were often custom orders and not widely produced- further pushing the scarcity of finding them then, and therefore now.

So, when I do come across square rugs they range from being either truly square (maybe only a few inches or so differing in length and width), or what I like to call square-ish, meaning more square than rectangular and up to, or around, 12” difference in length and width.

The more square… the more rare!

I feel so honored to have a family of partners overseas with whom I’ve worked with for over 5 years, who not only source the majority of the Persian and Turkish rugs that I keep in the EV collection, but also do all of the washing and expert repairs on them. When they offered me access to their coveted collection of square-ish rugs that they had tucked away, I just knew that I had to fly them into the studio to offer this rare shape of rug for those of you searching for just this.

So here they are folks… the rare square (ish) vintage rugs have arrived!