Beni Ourain Wool Pile Carpet

Two big diamonds, two small figures, and a great deal of quiet wool.

This pile carpet is Beni Ourain, from the Middle Atlas of Morocco in North Africa, made in the 20th century of knotted wool. Beni Ourain women wove deep cream carpets like this for their own households, as bedding and warmth in the cold of the Middle Atlas, and modernist designers later admired their spare dark lines. Two large lozenges meet at a single point on a pale ground, drawn in doubled brown lines. Within and around them float small stick figures, smaller diamonds and signs. A zigzag runs across one end. Just over eleven feet long.

What the little people are doing in there is their own affair.