Material

Common Grounds

02 / Material

Material


Wool, water, colour, hands.

It begins far from here,
on sheep grazing in New Zealand.
It ends on your floor.
Everything in between is done by hand.

The wool

New Zealand wool.
Long, bright fibres with a spring in them.
White enough to take any colour,
strong enough to stand back up
after every step across it.

The dye

Coloured by hand, the old way.
Each skein is lowered into the dye bath,
lifted, lowered again,
until the colour stops sitting on the wool
and becomes the wool.
No two batches match exactly.
We keep it that way.

Pile and flatweave — Standing Weave
Indigo into raw wool — Indigo Weather

The process

01

Drawing

Every rug begins as a composition, not a pattern.

02

Wool

New Zealand fleece, spun into yarn.

03

Dye

Hand-dyed in small batches, using traditional methods.

04

Sample

A 15 × 15 cm square, approved before anything else is made.

05

Hand

Made by hand in India, row after row.

The hand

Made by hand in India.
A hand never repeats itself exactly.
A line leans, a tone drifts.
We don’t correct it.
That is where a rug becomes one of one.

Made slowly

Days to dye. Weeks to make.
A rug is slow on purpose.
It is meant to outlast the room it lives in.

AMade by hand in India Wcommongrounds.homes
Ancient Habits