6'5" x 9'9" Pakistani Kazak Rug | Wool | Light Blue and Red

A rectangular room rug measuring 6'5" x 9'9", hand-knotted in Pakistan with a wool pile. The field is a soft light blue, laid out as a grid of small panels, each one holding a single plant or flower, with an ivory medallion at the centre and a red border of palmettes running round the outside.

Design

The Kazak drawing here is organised as a garden of compartments rather than one large geometric centre. Rows of small rectangles, some on red grounds, some on navy, ivory, pale green or sand, carry upright flowering sprays, leaf forms, cypress shapes and little vases. At the middle sits a lobed ivory cartouche framing a navy ground and an eight-point rosette, with a red vase form standing above and below it on the long axis. The main border repeats serrated red and salmon palmettes on light blue, and beyond it the ground continues with loose flowering branches and corner rosettes that run out to the plain ivory fringe.

Colour

The ground is a light, slightly greyed blue that shifts in tone across the width, lighter near the ends and cooler in the body, the kind of variation that comes of different dye lots in one field. Against it the red reads clear and warm, close to vermilion in the border palmettes and deeper inside the small panels. Navy blue appears only in the panel grounds and the medallion centre, which keeps the darkest value anchored to the middle of the rug. Beige, sand and a dusty pale green fill the remaining panels, with small touches of white and yellow in the flower heads.

Making

This is a hand-knotted rug with a wool pile, woven in Pakistan and listed as new in both age and condition. The back shown in the photographs is evenly knotted, with the pattern legible through the foundation, the sides finished with a matching blue cord and the ends left as plain ivory warp fringe. The pile is cut at a medium height, short enough that the outlines of the small panels stay crisp.