10'5" x 15'6" Turkish Hereke Rug | Green All Over Floral Field | 1970s Vintage, Excellent

This is a large, quietly worked Turkish rug at 10'5" x 15'6", hand-knotted in the 1970s in the Hereke design tradition with a wool pile on a cotton foundation. The field is a soft olive green, covered edge to edge with a fine floral lattice in turquoise, rose pink, navy, burgundy and ivory, and the whole thing is framed by an ivory main border of scrolling vines and split leaf arabesques. From standing height it reads as one continuous green garden; kneel down and the individual carnations, hyacinths and small rosettes separate out one by one. The pile is even, the ivory fringe at both ends is clean, and the condition is excellent for a rug of this age. It ships with our certificate of authenticity. Rooms that can actually hold a rug this long are uncommon, which is what makes good oversize handmade rugs in a usable palette hard to replace once they sell.

Design and Motifs

The drawing is built on an ogival lattice: slim ivory vines curve up and meet in pointed arches, and every compartment holds its own bouquet. The rows alternate as they climb the rug, so one band carries tall pink carnations, the next a spray of navy and turquoise hyacinth spikes, the next a rounded cluster of small 8 petal rosettes in burgundy and sky blue. Each compartment is mirrored left and right of its own center stem, which is what gives the field its disciplined, almost textile-like rhythm. This is a true all over floral design with no central medallion, so furniture can sit anywhere on it without cutting off a focal point. The ivory main border runs a continuous scroll of navy split leaf arabesques, brown palmettes and small turquoise blossoms, and it is held on both sides by narrow guard stripes of burgundy, blue and turquoise rosettes plus a fine outer ribbon band, four crisp frames in all before the olive selvage.

The Color Palette Up Close

The ground is a desaturated olive, closer to moss and dried sage than to emerald, and that muted base is what lets the small colors sing. Against it the weaver set turquoise and pale sky blue leaves, deep navy flower heads, rose pink and blush carnations, wine burgundy rosette centers, warm cocoa brown outlines and ivory vine work that traces the entire lattice. Nothing is loud on its own, but the mix gives the field a soft shot-silk shift as you walk around it, brownish and warm from one end, cool and green from the other. The ivory border resets the eye completely and keeps the rug from reading dark. It is an unusual and useful palette among green rugs, sitting comfortably with walnut and oak furniture, brass, cream upholstery and dusty rose or navy accents.

Hereke: The Weaving Town and the Weave Itself

Hereke is a small town on the eastern shore of the Sea of Marmara, southeast of Istanbul, where an imperial manufactory was established in 1843 to weave for the Ottoman court. Its reputation was built on fineness and on a court floral vocabulary of lattices, carnations, tulips and arabesque borders rather than on village geometry, and that design language spread through the better Anatolian workshops. This 1970s wool example follows it closely: the motifs are drawn small, and small motifs only stay legible on a tight weave, which is exactly what the reverse shows in the last photograph next to the tape measure. Turkish workshops knot with the symmetrical double knot, a sturdy structure that holds a dense, short pile well, and this rug still carries even pile across the whole field after 50 years. For collectors, a mid-century workshop piece of this scale in original condition is squarely in the period covered by our guide to dating an Oriental rug, and it is a good introduction to how Turkish work fits alongside other Oriental rug traditions.