3'3" x 12'10" Persian Karaja Runner | Wool | Ivory and Rose

A runner measuring 3'3" x 12'10", knotted in Persia in wool with a 3/8" pile. The field is ivory, warming to pale camel in places, and carries a single file of angular medallions down the length of the rug: nine of them, alternating in shape and colour, each one framed by small geometric filler that covers almost every open space. The border is narrow for the rug's length, a rose-red band between dark guard stripes, and the whole thing reads as pattern rather than as ground.

Design

The medallions follow the Karaja scheme of northwest Persia, a column of forms rather than one centred shape. Stepped crosses with hooked arms alternate with flattened octagons and with eight-pointed star rosettes, and between them sit pairs of latch-hook anchors and small ladder-like bars. The ivory field around them is filled with triangles, rosettes, diamonds, combs, tiny squared flowerheads and little barred boxes, drawn freehand and never quite repeating from one medallion to the next. The main border runs a chain of squared rosettes and angular leaf forms on rose red, flanked by two dark minor borders of reciprocal diamonds and a thin reciprocal sawtooth line in red at the field edge.

Colour

The field is ivory to light camel. Against it the medallions run in madder rose, soft coral, olive brown, grey-green and a dark aubergine close to black, with gold-tan outlining the octagons. The multi-colour effect is quiet rather than loud: the reds are muted toward brick and salmon, the greens are dusty, and the dark outlines hold everything in place. Small touches of blue-grey and a clear red appear in the filler motifs and in the border rosettes.

Making

Hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation, with a 3/8" pile and ivory fringe at the ends. The reverse, shown against a twelve inch ruler, is clear enough to read the border drawing from the back. The table records the condition as excellent. It is one of the hand-knotted pieces we carry at this long, narrow proportion.