Shot a couple days ago playing around with ideas for the Patterns challenge. This is a trivet, used for protecting the table from hot dishes out of the oven.
I thought of the Pattern challenge when I saw the thumbnail.
But a trivet should have three legs; maybe what you have here is just a hot plate mat ;-).
Interesting item.. definitely something for the pattern challenge! I like the symmetry here, but I agree with socalsteve that it would probably score better in voting if the composition was a bit more dramatic.