There is a particular hour after firing when a glaze finally cools, and the surface, smooth a moment before, breaks into thousands of fine, wandering cracks. Here, that same network covers a softly lit ivory ground: olive-bronze veins fork and rejoin like the surface of old porcelain, dense in places, thinning to a single hairline elsewhere. Hand-tufted by the weavers of Jodhpur, the wool holds its veining in a flat, even tone, so the pattern reads as drawn rather than printed. Set beneath gilt-armed chairs and dark velvet, its network holds its own against gold leaf and lacquer alike. Beneath a Georgian cornice, or against the bare height of a concrete ceiling, the cracks keep their own steady pattern regardless. In a Richmond riverside house, candlelight tracing every vein in turn, the floor wears its age the way fine porcelain always does.
