11'11" x 15' Oushak Design Rug | Blue Gray All-Over Floral | Hand-Knotted Wool, Made in India

This 11'11" x 15' rug is a brand new, hand-knotted piece in the Oushak tradition, woven in India with a wool pile on a cotton foundation and finished with hand-knotted ivory fringe at both ends. It has never been used, and it ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming it is a genuine hand-knotted rug rather than a machine-made copy. At this footprint it belongs with oversize area rugs: it will carry a full seating group with all four furniture legs on the pile, or run a 12 seat dining table with chairs that stay on the rug when pulled out. The drawing is soft and painterly rather than sharp, and the whole field sits in a quiet blue gray register that reads almost like faded fresco under daylight.

Design and Motifs

There is no central medallion. The field runs as a full all-over repeat built on 3 horizontal tiers of large paired palmettes, each one flanked by long curling serrated leaves that arch out and meet the next unit. Between the palmettes sit smaller 8 petal rosettes, star florets and slender vase forms, all connected by thin arabesque vines that drift across the ground rather than lock into a rigid lattice. The repeat is deliberately loose: no 2 palmettes are colored identically, so one is inked in deep indigo, the next in turquoise, the next in camel gold, which keeps a rug of this scale from looking printed. A single narrow main border carries alternating rosettes and 5 petal blossoms on a matching gray ground, held between fine guard stripes, so the border frames the field without competing with it. The corners are resolved cleanly at all 4 turns.

The Blue Gray Palette in Detail

The ground is a soft silver gray with a cool blue cast, and it is not flat: subtle horizontal striation runs through the wool, the natural abrash of hand-spun yarn, which gives the surface movement and depth. Against that ground the drawing moves through a full range of blues, from pale sky and powder blue in the small florets, to clear turquoise in the palmette hearts, to periwinkle and near navy indigo in the heaviest silhouettes. Warm tones do the balancing work: antique gold and camel in the leaves and vine stems, soft ivory and cream in the outlines, and a scattering of pale sage green in the border blossoms and smaller leaves. A few motifs are shaded in warm taupe brown, which grounds the cooler field. The overall effect is calm and light reflective, and it sits easily with gray, white, oatmeal and pale oak interiors without going cold.

Woven in India: Oushak Drawing, Modern Weaving Quality

The Oushak design comes out of western Anatolia, where weavers favored large-scale motifs, open spacing and softened color. This rug interprets that vocabulary and was hand-knotted in India, which is where most of the world's best contemporary hand-knotted work is now produced, and we say that with confidence: the workshops there have the loom width for oversize pieces, the spinning and dyeing control for a subtle palette like this one, and weavers who can hold a repeat straight across 15 feet. The back photographs show an even, regular knot across the whole width with crisp motif definition from the reverse, which is the honest test of the weave. The pile is medium height and plush underfoot, the selvages are tightly overcast, and the wool has the slight sheen of good quality fleece. If you are weighing this against a Persian piece, our guide on the difference between Persian and Oriental rug production explains exactly where each tradition earns its price.