5'7" x 5'10" Oushak Design Square Rug | Beige Field, Coral Border | New Wool Pile

At 5'7" x 5'10" this piece is effectively a true square, which is why pieces like it move quickly: very few looms are dressed for square rugs, and square rooms, bay windows and card tables rarely find one that fits. The field is a quiet sand beige covered by a loose floral vine, and the whole composition is held inside a wide coral main border. The pile is wool on a cotton foundation, the knotting is even, the selvages are tight, and the rug has never been walked on. It ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

There is no medallion here. Instead the drawing is a true all-over floral layout, a slow cocoa brown vine that loops across the field and anchors large 8 petal rosettes with red centers, open lotus blossoms, tulip heads and broad serrated leaves. Small 4 petal flowers float in the spaces between, and the outlines are picked out in a thin red line that keeps every shape crisp against the pale ground. The main border carries big shield-shaped cartouches alternating with palmettes and curling acanthus leaves, and it is bracketed by narrow guard stripes of repeating four petal blossoms. Look at the corner photo: the border turns the corner cleanly, with the cartouche landing where it should rather than being chopped off, which is a good sign of a drawn cartoon followed properly.

The Beige, Coral and Sage Green Palette

The field is beige with a honey cast, closer to toasted wheat than to white, and it shifts in raking light from cream to pale gold depending on where you stand. Against it the border reads coral: a warm red with brick and salmon in it rather than a cold crimson, which is what lets the rug sit with brown leather, walnut and green upholstery without fighting them. The accent palette is soft and earthy, with sage and olive green leaves, apricot and old gold petals, dusty rose blossoms, a few deep red flower centers for punch, and cocoa brown vine work. There is no harsh contrast anywhere in it. The fringe is ivory, the guard stripes pick up the lighter gold tone, and the reverse of the rug shows the same coral in a slightly softer, more salmon register.

Oushak Drawing, Woven in Pakistan

The Oushak idiom comes from western Anatolia, where weavers favored open fields, generous spacing and soft vegetal color over dense court drawing. This rug is woven in Pakistan, which is where a great deal of the world's best contemporary hand-knotted work is now produced, by workshops that weave traditional cartoons to a consistent standard with wool pile on a cotton foundation. The knotting is regular across the whole square, the pile is clipped at a medium height that shows the rosettes in relief, and the rug lies flat without buckling. If you want the background on how a piece like this sits in the wider family of hand-knotted weaving, our guide on what separates a Persian from an Oriental rug is worth the five minutes.