This lovely rug was woven by a skilled weaver using not cloth strips and in ordinary rag rugs, but woollen yarn. The yarn has most certainly been hand spun, and was probably also dyed using plant colours. Spinning yarn by hand was quite common until the middle of the 20th century and many old spinning wheels can still be found on the lofts of farms in Smaland (and bought on open-air auctions). In this rug both the "rosengang" and the "tusk aft" technique has been used and a rug of this quality might, instead of lying on the floor, have been used to cover a large wooden table or might even have been hung on the wall for decoration (and isolation). Many woollen rugs were woven for decoration and hung on walls or lay on benches or beds. The shades of brown in this rug reminds one of the shades of brown in oak wood, which was used in Sweden to produce fine furniture. The Oak tree has a strange history in Sweden and until the middle of the 1800's the Oak tree was in fact an unpopular tree, since all Oak Trees for hundreds of years had belonged to the King (who needed them for building (battle)ships), and ordinary people could be (and were) punished very severely if they cut down an Oak tree - even if it was growing in the middle of their field or some other "unsuitable" place. Dimensions: 93" x 28"