8'1" x 11'9" Pakistani Oushak Rug | Wool | Rust Orange and Sage

A 8'1" x 11'9" rectangular carpet knotted in Pakistan in an Oushak design, with a quarter inch pile of natural wool. The field is an open rust orange, drawn over with widely spaced flowerheads and leaves rather than a central medallion, and the whole thing is framed by a soft green main border between gold guard stripes. Seen from across a room it reads as one warm field with pale drawing floating on it.

The design

The field carries an all over pattern that is deliberately sparse: eight pointed star rosettes, cruciform flowerheads with dark centres, and thin stems that wander between them carrying serrated leaves. Large toothed palmettes, the size of a splayed hand and more, sit at the four corners of the field and at the mid points of the long sides, so the drawing is heaviest at the edges and thinnest through the middle. The main border runs a repeating sequence of broad leaf palmettes and small buds on a green ground, and it is flanked on both sides by guard stripes of chevrons, arrowheads pointing along the length of the rug. A narrow rust outer stripe closes the whole thing off, and the warp ends finish in plain ivory fringe.

The colour

The ground is rust orange, closer to terracotta where the light crosses the pile and to a dusty salmon in the middle of the field, with a faint vertical band of abrash from the dye lot. Against it the motifs are drawn in gold and pale beige, with tan outlines, brick red picked out in the smaller buds, and a dull brown at the centres of the stars. The main border shifts to a muted sage green, which cools the whole edge of the rug and keeps the orange from running to the boundary. A few motifs in the field and border are worked in a chalky light blue, sparingly enough that they register as small cool points rather than as a colour in their own right.

The making

It is hand-knotted in Pakistan, all wool on the pile at a quarter inch, and the reverse shown in the photographs is even and clearly legible, with the border pattern reading through as sharply as it does on the face. The rug is new and in excellent condition: full pile throughout, straight sides, intact fringe. The Oushak name here describes the drawing, the palmettes, the sparse field and the leaf border, which belongs to western Turkey, while the weaving itself is Pakistani.