12'1" x 17'11" Pakistani Traditional Rug | Pine Green | Oversize

A hand-knotted rug from Pakistan measuring 12'1" x 17'11", one of the oversize pieces that needs a long room to be seen properly. The field is pine green, covered edge to edge in fine floral scrollwork, with a pale medallion at the centre and a broad ivory border running all the way round. At a glance it reads as a dark rug, but the drawing inside it is light and busy, and the green only settles into solid colour at a distance.

Design

The traditional layout is a central medallion with matching corner spandrels. The medallion is lobed and roughly star-shaped, built from eight petal compartments around a small dark rosette, and finished top and bottom with a pendant that tapers into the field. The spandrels carry the same ivory ground and hold a single large palmette each, with a small square cartouche set into the outer corner. Between them the field is an allover pattern of thin scrolling vines, split leaves and open blossoms, drawn small and repeated at a close interval so that no part of the green is left plain. The border is a wide ivory band of curling acanthus leaves and rosettes, flanked on both sides by narrow guard stripes of meander and tiny flowerheads, four stripes in all before the pile meets the dark selvedge.

Colour

The ground is a deep pine green, cool rather than olive, closer to bottle green where the light falls straight onto the pile and near black in the shadow of the medallion. Against it the vinework is worked in ivory, sage and a greyed sea blue, with occasional flecks of rust and soft rose that keep the field from reading as a single tone. The medallion centre is the warmest part of the rug: apricot and pale gold around a small ring of dark green, with dusty blue petals either side. The border repeats those same greens and blues on ivory, and the guard stripes pick up a muted salmon that ties the corners back to the middle.

Making

Hand-knotted in Pakistan, in rectangular form at 12'1" x 17'11", and listed in excellent condition. The weave is fine and even, as the close-up of the reverse shows: tight rows behind the pine green ground, a flat woven end band, and a full ivory fringe left long and plied. The pile is cut low, which is what allows the small vine drawing across the field to stay legible. More hand-knotted pieces of this scale can be found across the rest of the collection.