7'6" x 10'10" Bokhara Oriental Rug | Tribal Gul Design | 1980s Hand-Knotted Wool

This is a room-size Bokhara from the 1980s, hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation and still carrying a full, even pile with no thin spots or restoration. The drawing is pure Turkoman: disciplined rows of octagonal guls marching across a saturated red field, framed by a stack of narrow geometric guard borders and closed at both ends by dark elem panels and plain ivory kilim ends with original fringe. At 7'6" x 10'10" it reads as a serious floor piece rather than an accent, and the repeat pattern means it works from any viewing angle. Every rug we ship travels with a certificate of authenticity confirming it is a genuine hand-knotted Oriental rug, not a machine-made reproduction of one.

Design and Motifs

The field is laid out on a lattice of thin black lines that divides it into a grid, with a quartered octagonal gul, the motif collectors call the elephant foot, set in every compartment. Each gul is split into 4 quarters filled with tiny hooked and stepped devices in rust, ivory and brown, and between the rows sit small cruciform and candelabra fillers that keep the surface from going flat. The border system is where the weaver spent her patience: several narrow bands of diamonds, zigzags, serrated leaves and 8 pointed stars run one inside the next, tightening the eye toward the field. At each end an elem panel carries bold comb and ladder figures in ivory and orange against near black, a signature finish on tribal Turkoman weaving that the maker of this piece rendered with unusual crispness for a village-tradition rug. If you like this vocabulary of straight lines and repeats, it sits squarely within the family of geometric rugs.

A Field of Deep Madder Red

The ground is a deep madder red that shifts between wine and burgundy as the pile bends, lighter and slightly warmer at the center of the field in raking light, cooler and closer to oxblood along the borders where the drawing is dense. Charcoal black outlines every gul and every border band, giving the red something hard to push against, while ivory appears in measured doses: inside the quartered guls, in the comb figures of the elem panels, and in the flat woven ends. Rust orange and a soft apricot run through the guard borders and the small star fillers, and a muted brown ties the two together so nothing reads as a bright spot. There is no pastel, no washed tone and no chemical sheen here. The color is the standard warm Oriental red palette at its most concentrated, which is why it settles so easily against wood floors, leather seating and cream upholstery.

Woven in Pakistan in the Turkoman Tradition

Bokhara rugs take their name from the old caravan market of Bokhara, where Turkmen weavers once traded their work, and the design traveled with those families into Pakistan, where Lahore and Karachi workshops built a reputation for it through the second half of the 20th century. This example is honest workshop weaving from that period: a tight, regular knot count visible on the reverse in image 9, straight selvedges, even rows, and good springy highland wool that has held its luster for roughly 40 years of careful ownership. The back shows the pattern almost as clearly as the front, which is the simplest test of a well-knotted piece. Buyers looking at this size will find it a natural fit among 8 x 11 area rugs, and among tribal rugs it is one of the easiest designs to live with, because the repeat hides traffic and the dense wool takes a beating without showing it.