2'9" x 18'3" Bokhara Runner Rug | Repeating Tekke Guls | Hand-Knotted Wool, Never Used

Finding a hand-knotted runner that actually reaches 18 feet is the hard part of furnishing a long corridor, and this one measures a full 2'9" x 18'3" in a single continuous weave. It is a classic Bokhara: a salmon wool field carrying paired columns of octagonal guls from one end to the other, framed by a stack of narrow guard stripes and a wide rosette border. The pile is wool on a cotton foundation, the ends finish in natural ivory fringe, and the rug has never been on a floor. Every piece we ship travels with a certificate of authenticity confirming it is genuinely hand-knotted, along with its measurements, materials and origin. For a buyer who needs one weaving to run the length of a long hallway runner without seams or a second rug butted against it, this is exactly the piece.

Design and Motifs

The field runs 2 guls wide for the entire 18'3", each one a flattened octagon quartered into four sections, with a small stepped diamond at the center and hooked arms reaching toward the corners. Weavers call this the Tekke gul, collectors often call it the elephant foot, and between every pair sits a slim cruciform star that keeps the rows from reading as a plain grid. The border system is where the drawing gets interesting: a wide band of alternating panels filled with diagonal lattice work and small floral sprigs, punctuated at intervals by a single ivory rosette, then three narrower guard stripes of running checkers and tiny hooked triangles on each side. The end panels repeat the lattice in a horizontal register before the fringe. It is disciplined, repeating, entirely geometric drawing in the Turkoman tribal rug tradition, and at this length the repetition becomes the whole point: the eye travels the corridor with it.

The Salmon Field and Its Accent Colors

The ground is a warm salmon, a soft pink-toned terracotta that sits between coral and clay and shifts slightly with the direction of the pile, lighter when you walk toward the fringe and deeper when you look back down the length. Against it the guls are outlined in dense black, filled with olive brown and a pale butter ivory, with small touches of soft sage green inside the quartered centers. The ivory is used sparingly and deliberately: it lights the outer contour of each gul, the single rosettes in the main border, and the tiny checker teeth in the guard stripes, so the pattern stays legible from a standing height rather than blurring into one warm mass. The brown reads almost bronze where the light catches it. The ends carry natural undyed ivory fringe. It is a palette that sits comfortably on wood floors and warm paint, and the salmon keeps it far softer than the usual deep red Bokhara.

Bokhara Weaving in Pakistan

Bokhara takes its name from the old Central Asian market city where Turkoman tribal weavings were traded, and the design traveled with the weavers. Today the best Bokharas are made in Pakistan, where workshops around Lahore have kept the gul repertoire alive for generations and knot it on cotton warps with good highland wool. Hand-knotting a runner of this length is a commitment: the loom has to be dressed for the full 18'3", the 2 columns of guls have to stay on their center line for 219 inches, and the borders have to hold an even width from end to end, which this weaver managed with only the gentle hand-drawn variation you want in a handmade piece. The pile is clipped low, which suits a corridor that takes traffic, and the weave lies flat without curling at the edges. If you are weighing how this tradition relates to the Persian workshops, our guide to Persian rugs vs Oriental rugs sets out the difference plainly.