6'8" x 9'9" Pakistani Kazak Rug | Wool | Purple and Ivory

A 6'8" x 9'9" rectangular rug hand-knotted in Pakistan in fine wool. The layout is unusual for the type: a tall violet-purple centre panel, set inside a border so wide that the ivory ground reads as the main colour of the rug from across a room. Everything in it, field and border alike, is built from boteh.

Design

At the middle of the purple panel sits a six-pointed ivory star outlined in olive, each point carrying a red paisley with a pale blue centre. A large shield-shaped boteh hangs above it and another below, both filled with green and gold leafwork and fringed in red combs. Around them run thin vines with small palmettes, rosettes and little hooked birds. The Kazak border is the part that carries the rug: oversized boteh on an ivory ground, leaning left and right in turn, strung on a brown vine and separated by eight-pointed stars and scattered sprays. A narrow gold band divides border from field, and a teal guard stripe of small boteh and rosettes closes the whole thing in.

Colour

The field is a saturated violet-purple, deeper than indigo and with a reddish cast where the pile turns. Against it the ivory border looks almost warm. The drawing is done in madder red, olive green, a soft teal blue and a camel-to-brown that carries most of the vinework. Green and gold fill the larger boteh so that no two in the border repeat exactly. The end fringes take a pale rose tint from the warps where they meet the purple selvedge.

Making

Hand-knotted in a Pakistani workshop with a fine wool pile. The back, photographed against a ruler, shows straight, even rows of knots and clean colour boundaries, with the small handmade label still attached at the selvedge. The rug is new and in perfect condition, full pile throughout, with the ends and sides intact.