6'10" x 9'10" Persian Oushak Rug | Bluish Gray

This rug measures 6'10" x 9'10", a medium floor size that covers a seating group without running to the walls, and it was knotted in Persia to an Oushak drawing. At a glance it reads as a pale blue-grey field carrying four large caramel-brown figures, framed by a wide salmon border. The shape is a plain rectangle with straight sides and a short natural fringe at both ends.

Design

The field is nearly open. Four big quatrefoil rosettes sit in two rows, each built from an interlaced lattice centre with spiky serrated leaves flaring out on all four sides, so that the outline looks half flower and half star. Between the two rows, in the middle of the rug, is a single small rosette on a stem, much lighter in weight than the four around it, which keeps the centre of the field from going empty. The border system runs to five bands: a wide main stripe of hooked floral heads and angular rosettes, an inner and outer guard of running scroll, and a narrow plain blue-grey outer edge. In image 3 you can see the drawing wander slightly where the weaver followed the line by eye rather than a strict cartoon.

Colour

The ground is a bluish grey that moves across the rug in horizontal bands, lighter and greyer in the upper half, deeper and bluer towards the lower end, the ordinary abrash of wool dyed in separate lots. Against it the four large figures are a soft caramel to walnut brown, outlined in a lighter apricot that lifts them off the ground. The main border is salmon, a pink-tinged tan, with rosettes in olive green and small flecks of charcoal and mid blue. Nothing in the palette is loud: the strongest contrast on the rug is brown against pale blue, and even that is softened by the apricot outlines.

Making

It is a hand-knotted rug, tied knot by knot on the loom in Persia and finished with a flat woven end and overcast selvedge. The last photograph shows the edge and the reverse against a ruler: the weft lines run evenly, the knotting is regular, and the pattern comes through clearly from the back. Condition is excellent, with full pile, intact edges and the fringe complete at both ends.