5'4" x 13'1" Caucasian Kazak Rug | Semi Antique Tribal Gallery Piece | 4 Star Medallions

This is a long, narrow Kazak from the Caucasus, 5'4" x 13'1", hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation with a 3/8" pile that still stands full and even across the whole length. Four big octagonal star medallions run end to end down a dark pink field, framed by a wide ivory border packed with small drawn flowerheads. The shape is the interesting part: at 13 feet long and only 5'4" wide, it is the classic gallery format, the piece that solves a long room, a wide hall or the space beside a bed where a standard rectangle looks stranded. It is a genuine hand-knotted Oriental rug, not a machine copy of one, and every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity that records the origin, the materials and the measurements you see above.

Design and Motifs

Four octagonal medallions sit in a single column down the field, each one holding an 8 pointed star with a smaller star rosette at its center, and each octagon is ringed by a sawtooth outline and a run of hooked latch motifs in yellow green. Between the medallions the weaver dropped small stepped connector bars and pairs of tiny star flowers, so the field never goes empty but never gets busy either. Everything is drawn on the diagonal and the straight, which is what separates Caucasian geometric rugs from the curved floral work of the city looms. The main border is a wide ivory band of compartmented flowerheads and leafy scrolls, flanked by narrow guard stripes of checkerboard squares and a reciprocal band at both ends. Note the small asymmetries in the medallion fills and the border repeat, visible in the close-up photographs: those are the fingerprints of a rug drawn from memory rather than from a cartoon.

A Dark Pink Field With Greenish Beige and Ivory

The field is a deep dark pink with a raspberry red undertone, the kind of madder-family tone that photographs a shade brighter in direct light than it looks on the floor. Against it the weaver worked a greenish beige that shifts toward chartreuse in the medallion quarters and the hooked outlines, and it is that green and pink pairing that gives the rug its personality. White ivory does the structural work: it fills the wide main border, outlines the octagons and picks out the central star rosettes so each medallion reads clearly from across a room. Charcoal and near black supply the drawing lines and the star arms, while a soft lavender grey appears in the sawtooth rings and the connecting bars, cooling the pink down. Small touches of tomato red and pale gold sit in the border flowerheads. Across the 13 foot length there is gentle abrash in the pink, a natural tonal drift from dye lot to dye lot that is proof of hand-dyed wool.

Kazak Weaving in the Caucasus

Kazak is the name given to the weavings of the southwestern Caucasus, the highland districts between the Lesser Caucasus range and the Armenian plateau, and the name has traveled in the trade as Kazak, Kazakh and Qazax. These were pastoral communities with excellent long-staple mountain wool, and the weave reflects it: a medium knot count, a substantial handle and a lustrous pile that takes dye deeply and burnishes with age instead of dulling. The back, shown here against a ruler, is even and legible, with the knot rows sitting straight and the selvedges intact. Kazak looms were never large workshop operations, which is why bold repeating medallions, high contrast color and strong angular drawing became the house style, and why collectors of tribal rugs value these pieces for their drawing and their palette rather than for fineness. A gallery-length Kazak in excellent condition, with its full pile and original ends and sides, is a harder thing to find than the common 4x6 scatter size.