6'7" x 9'10" Pakistani Kazak Rug | Wool | Ivory

A hand-knotted wool rug measuring 6'7" x 9'10", knotted in Pakistan in the Kazak manner of the Caucasus. The field is ivory, left open enough that the drawing reads clearly from across a room, and it is framed by five bands of border in red, camel and indigo. Seen from the end, as in the second and third photographs, the rug looks lighter than most Kazaks, which usually put red or blue on the ground instead.

Design

Three large medallions run up the long axis of the field. The two at the ends are stepped red lozenges with eight-pointed green and ivory stars at their centres; the middle one is paler, a sky blue hooked diamond with a red and green rosette inside it and comb-like projections at each corner. Between them sit paired triangles in red and camel, turned inwards like arrowheads, and the four corners of the field carry squared rosette panels in camel and green. Scattered through the ivory ground are small eight-point stars, hooked diamonds, and little arrow and leaf sprays, with curling hooked pendants at the field's edges. The border scheme, shown close in the fourth and fifth photographs, puts a wide madder red band of star rosettes and diamonds between two camel-ground Greek key guards, with an indigo band of hooked serrated motifs outside those and a plain ivory outer edge.

Colour

The ivory ground is a warm, slightly creamy undyed tone rather than a bleached white, and everything else is set against it. Madder red carries the main border and the two end medallions, running towards brick where the pile turns in the light. Indigo sits in the outermost band and in the fine outlines of the field motifs, with a lighter sky blue used for the central medallion and the rosettes. Camel and soft apricot fill the key-pattern guards, and small amounts of yellow-green, in the star centres and the tiny four-petal flowers, keep the red from going heavy.

Weave and material

Hand-knotted in wool with a 3/8" fine pile, this is a brand new piece in perfect condition, and the back photograph shows an even, legible knot grid with the pattern reading clearly through. It is a rectangular rug with flat-woven ivory ends and plain ivory selvages, one of the Caucasian-design weavings that make up much of the hand-knotted work coming out of Pakistan today.