6'5" x 9'7" Afghan Turkman Bokhara Rug | Wool | Beige and Brown

A hand-knotted rug from Afghanistan, measuring 6'5" x 9'7", carrying the Turkman Bokhara pattern of octagonal guls repeated across the whole field. There are eighteen of them, six rows of three, dark seal brown against a pale ground, and the field is held inside a deep stack of narrow borders rather than one wide one. At a few paces it reads as an even, quiet surface of pattern with no centre to it.

The design

Each gul is an octagon divided into four quarters by a stepped cross, the quarters filled with small hooked bars, rosettes and comb-like forms in light wool on the dark ground. Between the rows stand slender branched figures with star-tipped arms, one set upright between every pair of guls, which keeps the spacing from going flat. The borders are the other half of the work: counting outward from the field there are narrow bands of checkerwork, running hooks, serrated triangles and small cruciform flowers, stacked close together so the frame occupies a good third of the rectangular surface. The outermost stripe repeats a row of small dark triangles along the full length of both sides.

The colour

Two tones carry the whole rug. The ground is a light beige that cools towards grey taupe in the close photographs, with a faint lateral variation across the field where the wool was spun unevenly. Against it sits a dark brown, near enough to seal or bitter chocolate, used for the gul outlines, the small tree figures and the darkest of the border bands. A third, paler ivory appears only inside the guls, in the hooks and rosettes, and it is what keeps the dark octagons from reading as solid blocks. The side cords are overcast in the same dark brown and the fringe at both ends is left pale.

The making

Hand-knotted in Afghanistan with a wool pile, cut to a short, firm height that lets the small border motifs stay legible. The back shows the knots in clear rows, with the pattern reading through almost as sharply as on the face. The rug is new and the condition is given as perfect: no wear in the pile, full fringe at both ends, edges intact along their length.