10'1" x 14'4" Pakistani Rug | Oversize | Beige

A hand-knotted rug measuring 10'1" x 14'4", knotted in Pakistan and listed in excellent condition. The field is a quiet beige, carrying a large circular medallion just above centre, and the whole piece is framed by a wide border of fan-shaped palmettes. Seen from across a room it reads as one pale, even plane with a single round event in the middle of it.

Design

The ground is covered edge to edge in fine scrolling vinework worked only a shade or two away from the ground colour, so it surfaces as texture rather than pattern. Against that sits the medallion: a ring of latticed fans and leafy cartouches enclosing a crimson core of acanthus scrolls and small paired flowers, symmetrical across both axes. There are no corner spandrels, which is unusual for a layout of this kind and leaves the field open around the circle. The main border is a crimson band of flower heads and ribbon scrolls, held between narrow blue and ivory lattice stripes, and outside it runs a broad pale band of large fan palmettes with a stepped rose-pink meander at the outermost edge. A small inscribed cartouche is woven into the end border, visible in the close photograph.

Colour

The dominant note is an ivory-beige that warms towards honey where the pile lies with the light and cools towards cream against it. Everything else is accent: a deep crimson in the medallion centre and the main border, rose pink in the scrollwork and the outer meander, slate blue in the lattice guards and the flower centres, sage green and dull gold through the leaves, and near-black outlines that keep the drawing legible. The reds are the only saturated colour on the rug, and they are confined to the medallion and the border band, so the pale field holds the eye.

Making

Hand-knotted in Pakistan in a rectangular format, with a clipped pile, flat-lying handle and plain white fringe at both ends. The close view of the edge shows the border stripes drawn cleanly stitch for stitch across the ruler, with the outlines holding their line through the curved palmettes. Condition is given as excellent.