Most people don’t realise a photograph can become a hand-knotted rug

A few months ago, a long-time client from Texas visited our workshop.
In the middle of a work conversation, he told me about his dog, his companion for over a decade, who had passed away recently.

He showed me a photograph he loved.
And he asked, quietly:
“Can you make something lasting out of this?”
We said yes.

📌 Most people don’t realise a photograph can become a hand-knotted rug.

Here’s how we did it, and how this craft makes it possible:

1.⁠ ⁠The photograph
He sent us the image, his dog sitting by the porch.
That became the reference for everything that followed.

2.⁠ ⁠The rendering
Our design team uploaded the photograph into our rug-design software and rebuilt it knot-by-knot as a CAD map.

Every detail had to be redrawn: eyes, fur texture, shadow, depth.
This becomes the “map” that the weavers follow.

3.⁠ ⁠Colouring
A dog’s fur isn’t one colour – it’s many tones of brown, cream, and shadow.
For this rug, the CAD file used 30–40 shades, just to make the picture feel alive.

4.⁠ ⁠Assigning the weavers
Only a few master weavers we work with can execute portrait rugs.
The margins for error are almost zero — one wrong knot can change expression.
They took over the project.

5.⁠ ⁠Weaving
The rug was 6×9 ft and took around 4.5 months to weave.

Knot by knot.
Row by row.
A photograph slowly turning into texture.

6.⁠ ⁠Finishing
Wash → stretch → clip → bind → inspect.

Then we shipped it to him.
He wrote back saying it was the closest thing to having his dog home again.

📌 For me, that’s the real beauty of hand-knotting:
It can hold memories.
Not just designs.

We at Understorey are a custom design house. If you can imagine it, we can weave it.