10' x 14' Pakistani Bokhara Rug | Wool | Rose and Ivory

A 10' x 14' carpet knotted in Pakistan in organic wool, worked in the Bokhara pattern that Pakistani workshops have made their own. Seen whole, it reads as a close field of small octagonal medallions in even ranks, roughly fourteen across and more than twenty deep, held inside a stack of narrow borders and a broad panelled band at each end. It is a rectangular rug of a size meant for a full room rather than a seating group.

The design

The field carries rows of guls, each an octagon quartered into brown and ivory sections around a small stepped centre, spaced so tightly that the ground between them shows only as a lattice of rose. In the gaps sit slim cross-shaped motifs with hooked arms, aligned column by column so the whole field is on a strict grid. Six or seven bands make up the border: arrow and candelabra shapes repeating in the widest of them, a row of oval rosettes set in ivory cartouches on the inner band, and thin barber-pole guards between. At both ends a deeper panel of latch-hooked diamonds and comb forms in black and ivory closes the design, finishing in a narrow flat-woven strip and plain fringe.

The colour

The ground is a soft rose, cooler and dustier in the flat overhead shot than in the raking close-ups, where the light along the pile pulls it towards brick. Against it the guls are outlined in a dense black and filled with warm brown and ivory, so the pattern reads clearly from across a room rather than dissolving into the field. A pale sea-green appears in small quantities inside the guls and along the guard stripes, cool enough to lift the rose without competing with it.

The making

Hand-knotted in Pakistan, with a pile of organic wool that takes on a low sheen where the light runs across it, visible in the angled photographs. The folded corner shows the reverse: an even, close weave with the gul pattern fully legible from the back. Sides are overcast in the same rose as the outer guard, and the ends are finished with a short kilim band and ivory fringe. The rug is new and in perfect condition.