7'11" x 9'9" Indian Tribal Oriental Rug | Pazyryk Horse and Deer Design | Brand New

This 7'11" x 9'9" piece is a tribal retelling of the oldest surviving knotted rug known, the Pazyryk carpet pulled from a frozen burial mound and dated to roughly the 5th century BC. The field is a strict grid of small squares, each one holding a rosette, and the outer bands march with saddled horses and grazing deer just as the ancient original does. It is hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation, brand new and never walked on, with a thick even pile and clean ivory fringe at both ends. Every rug we ship leaves Freeport with a certificate of authenticity. At this footprint it reads as a true 8x10 area rug, wide enough to carry a sofa group with the front legs on and still show border on all 4 sides.

Design and Motifs

The field is laid out as a tiled grid, more than 100 small squares separated by dark aubergine and ivory lattice lines, each square framed in sage green and filled with an 8 petal rosette built from teal buds, gold stems and tiny dark leaves. Around that calm repeat the borders build outward in 5 distinct bands: a narrow cartouche band of stylized animals, a charcoal ground band of deer and elk walking nose to tail, an ivory band of 8 point star rosettes, then the main band of horses in ivory, caramel and plum, each one drawn with a saddle cloth and a standard raised beside it, and finally a second cartouche band of boxed animals in ivory, teal and brown. The drawing is deliberately angular and flat, with no shading and no curved vines, which is exactly how the archaic source is drawn and what puts this piece firmly with the best tribal rugs rather than with formal city patterns.

Color: Brick Red Ground with Teal, Sage and Ivory

The dominant note is a warm brick red that shifts between terracotta and a deeper rust as the pile catches light, lightly abrashed so the field breathes instead of sitting flat. Each grid square sits on that red and is outlined first in sage green, then in a soft oatmeal cream, so the whole surface reads as red and cream from standing height. Inside the squares the accents are a chalky teal blue, a muted gold ochre and near black leaves, with aubergine purple doing the work of the lattice lines. The animal borders change the balance: the deer band runs on a dark brown to black ground that frames the field like a shadow line, the star band is full ivory, and the horses on the wide outer band appear in ivory, caramel brown, grey and plum with teal and purple saddle cloths. Charcoal, cream and small flecks of green keep the guard stripes lively. Overall the palette is earthy and low glare, the kind of red that works against oak, walnut and warm plaster rather than fighting them.

Origin and Weaving Quality: Made in India

This rug was hand-knotted in India, which is where most of the world's good contemporary hand-knotted work is now made, and we say that with confidence after decades of buying there. The weaving centers of northern India have the hand-spun wool, the dye discipline and the bench skill to carry an archaic pattern like this one without flattening it out. Quality shows in the back: the knots sit in even rows on a cotton foundation, the grid lines stay straight across nearly 8 feet of width, and the animal figures repeat without drifting out of register. The wool is springy and full bodied with a healthy sheen, spun thick enough to take real traffic, and the selvedges and ends are finished tight. If you are weighing how this kind of piece differs from city workshop weaving, our guide to what makes an Oriental rug distinct is worth reading before you decide.