5' x 8' Bokara Oriental Rug | Navy Blue Gul Repeat Field | New, Never Used

This 5' x 8' Bokara has never been laid in a home. It is hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation, with a deep navy field carried edge to edge by ordered rows of ivory and apricot gul medallions and a border system of 9 separate bands. The pile is clipped short and even, which is what gives a Bokara its characteristic silky sheen under lamplight, and the handle is firm rather than floppy, so the rug lies flat straight out of the roll. At 5 feet by 8 feet it is the size that works under a coffee table, at the foot of a queen bed, or in a study where the whole rug stays visible. Every rug we ship leaves Freeport with a certificate of authenticity confirming it is genuine hand-knotted work, along with its measurements, materials and origin.

Design and Motifs

The field is a classic Bokara all over repeat design: rows of octagonal gul medallions, the motif collectors call the elephant foot, each quartered by a cross and filled with small hooked leaf forms in coral red and navy on an ivory and apricot ground. Between the rows sit small stepped diamond rosettes with 4 hooked arms, which keep the spacing tight and stop the repeat from reading as a plain grid. The border is where this piece gets interesting. A wide main band of navy panels holds an 8 point star rosette in each compartment, flanked either side by narrow guard stripes of flower chains and a crossed lattice ribbon, and the two ends finish with a broad diamond trellis band in apricot and ivory with small tree forms inside the lozenges. The drawing throughout is square and disciplined, the kind of tribal geometric work that reads cleanly from across a room, and the outer edge closes with a plain navy band and ivory cotton fringe at both ends.

The Colors Up Close

The ground is a saturated navy blue that leans royal where the light catches the pile and turns nearly midnight in the shadow of the nap, one of the reasons navy blue Oriental rugs are so forgiving in rooms with dark wood or heavy furniture. Against it the pattern runs in a warm family: golden apricot and peach through the medallion bodies and the trellis band, clean ivory in the outlines and the smaller rosettes, and sharp coral red accents inside the guls and scattered through the guard stripes as tiny dots. Look closely at the detail photographs and you will find small points of dark green and soft grey in the flower chains, which is what keeps the border from flattening into one tone of orange. There is no abrash or streaking in the navy, and no bleed between the red and the ivory, so the color reads as crisp and deliberate rather than mellowed. On a pale floor the navy anchors the room; on a dark floor the apricot and ivory do the lifting.

Bokara Weaving and Where It Comes From

The gul design belongs to the Turkoman weavers of Central Asia, whose rugs were traded through the market city of Bukhara, and the name stuck to the pattern rather than to the place it was woven. This piece was made in Pakistan, where workshops took up the Bokara repertoire in the mid 20th century and have since become the main source for it, weaving on cotton warps with hand-spun wool, clipping the pile low so the pattern stays legible, and finishing with a wash that brings up the luster. A good Bokara is judged on three things: how straight the rows of guls stay down the length, how evenly the borders turn the corners, and whether the knotting is dense enough for the small hooked details to hold their shape. All 3 hold up here. If you are weighing it against Persian village and workshop pieces, our guide to what separates a Persian rug from a broader Oriental rug explains how the two groups are classified and priced.