11'10" x 18'10" Moroccan Design Oriental Rug | Ivory & Grey Abstract Berber Pattern | Brand New Hand-Knotted Wool

This is a brand new, never used piece that measures 11'10" x 18'10", putting it squarely in the 12 x 18 oversize class that most weavers simply will not attempt. It is hand-knotted in Pakistan from 100% natural wool, with a full 1/2" pile that gives the surface real body underfoot, and the sewn workshop label on the reverse records the piece as Moroccan pattern, transitional contemporary style, 575 x 360 cm. Pieces at this width need a loom wide enough for two or three weavers to sit side by side for the better part of a year, which is why genuinely hand-knotted oversize rugs in a modern idiom are so hard to find. Every rug we ship carries a certificate of authenticity confirming it was hand-knotted, along with its size, materials and origin.

Design and Motifs

There is no border here and no medallion. The field is built as a loose collage of blocks, shifting between ivory ground and darker panels the way a Berber sleeping rug does, with each section carrying its own vocabulary. You can read elongated wavy stems that run the full length of the field, stacked ladder bands broken into small squares, arrowhead and chevron clusters, hooked lozenges outlined in fine dark lines, and a diamond lattice worked in thin pencil-like drawing across the lower ivory panel. Several motifs are drawn in a speckled salt and pepper wool that reads almost like charcoal on paper. Nothing repeats exactly, nothing mirrors, and the drawing deliberately wobbles off the straight line, which is the point of the tradition: this is free-hand weaving rather than a cartoon copied square by square. Among modern and contemporary rugs, this kind of asymmetry is what lets a piece this large read as art rather than as wall-to-wall.

Color Palette: Ivory, Charcoal and Denim Blue

The dominant tone is a warm undyed ivory, closer to raw fleece than to bleached white, and it carries a faint honey cast where the light rakes across the pile. Against it the weaver has set two darks: a cool charcoal grey that goes nearly brown-black in the heaviest panels, and a soft mid grey used for the quieter shapes. Running between them is a whole family of blues, from a washed powder blue in the small motifs, through a dusty slate, up to a deeper denim that fills entire blocks in the upper and lower thirds. Because the wool is hand-spun and the dye lots vary, the blue panels break into gentle horizontal striations, an abrash that keeps the large flat areas alive instead of dead. Look at the reverse and you see the other half of the story: rose, brick and pale gold wefts hidden in the structure, along with the occasional red flick that surfaces in the pile. The spec sheet calls this a grey and ivory rug, and that is the honest summary, but the blue is what gives it character.

Origin and Weaving Quality

Pakistan has become one of the strongest sources in the world for hand-knotted work in the Moroccan and Berber idiom, and the reason is wool. The weavers here spin a long-staple, high-lanolin fleece by hand, which gives the pile its slight irregularity and its resistance to crushing, and they knot it on a heavy wool foundation rather than a thin machine-spun one. The end finishes on this piece are plain flat-woven kilim bands finished with hand-braided grey tassels, the sides are overcast by hand, and the knotting runs straight and even across a 142" width, which is a genuine test of loom control. If you are weighing this against a traditional formal piece, the difference is explained in our guide to Persian rugs vs Oriental rugs. The rug has never been laid, never been walked on, and arrives in perfect condition.