The carpet’s title refers both to a town in southern Spain, namely Alcaraz, and to the sky as a design effect, echoing its resemblance to an overcast sky. Jan Kath chose the latter as a twist on a classical pattern of stylized palms and vines (arabesques), all facing the same direction. Two materials were spun together to create the yarns used in the decorative pattern: two thirds fine Chinese silk and one third soft Tibetan highland wool. The combination lends the pile a variable structure and feel. The repeated pattern is surrounded by a border of dark arabesques.

Although signs of aging seem to permeate the pattern, these turn out to be the closely shorn yellow-gold silk pile. Like clouds covering parts of the sky, what looks like flaking caused by weathering or wear and tear effectively “erases” the classical pattern – which can do nothing to prevent its own apparent dissolution. The design thus refers to Erased Classic, the title of the commercial series to which Alcaraz Sky belongs. In this collection, which can be considered a milestone in Kath’s oeuvre, he breaks through old patterns of perception. The series consists of a number of handmade carpet designs whose motifs allude to the deconstruction of classical textile patterns as well as the abstraction of their decorative elements. What we are witnessing here is an incipient metamorphosis into new and unusual forms of design.

As with the rug Verona Vendetta, Kath is responding not only to the role of ornamentation here but also to the function it fulfills in the self-determination of art, i.e. with respect to aesthetic autonomy. Carpet weavers in Nepal worked for months to realize Kath’s digital design for Alcaraz Sky by hand. Each pixel was transformed into a Tibetan knot of handwoven Himalayan highland wool and Chinese silk. The custom-trimmed threads of the pile create a bas-relief effect, consciously resisting the rigid structures of classical carpetmaking and, quite literally, manifesting itself at various levels.