Homa Djalali

Homa learned kilim weaving from her mother and aunts, seated at the same horizontal ground loom her family has used for as long as anyone can remember. Unlike a knotted pile carpet, a kilim is a flatweave — the pattern built entirely from the interlocking of colored weft threads, which means every motif has to be planned in her head before the shuttle passes, with no pile to hide a miscount. She works mostly in undyed wool — natural cream, brown, and grey shades from the fleece itself — set against small fields of madder red or walnut-dyed brown, in the diamond and hook motifs specific to her region. A single rug can take two to three months on the loom, worked in sessions of a few hours at a time. Her weavings are reached and paid for through a screened export partner outside Iran.

Homa weaves flat on a horizontal loom, working kilim motifs she learned as a girl into undyed and naturally dyed wool, reached and paid through a screened export partner outside Iran.

Iran (via intermediary)

She wants the undyed wool's own color to do as much work in a pattern as any dye she could add to it.