8'6" x 11'8" Pakistani Ziegler Rug | Wool | Beige and Green

A rectangular carpet measuring 8'6" x 11'8", hand-knotted in Pakistan with a wool pile in the Ziegler manner, which is the European-commissioned workshop style built on large palmettes and open vine work. At a glance it is a pale golden beige field crowded with serrated leaves and blossoms, held inside a wide olive green border.

Design

The field carries an all-over drawing rather than a single dominant medallion: paired palmettes and half-palmettes, long sickle leaves with sawtooth edges, lotus heads and small eight-petal rosettes, all strung on thin green and brown vines that cross and recross the ground. A small ogival rosette sits at the centre of the field, no larger than the palmettes around it, so the pattern reads as continuous from end to end. The main border is a procession of round cartouche palmettes alternating with arching feathered leaves, and it is flanked on both sides by burgundy guard stripes of alternating buds and three-pronged tulip sprigs, separated from the field by a narrow ivory ribbon. The corner photographs show the border turning cleanly, with the palmette set square into the corner rather than cut off.

Colour

The ground is a warm beige that goes close to apricot where the light runs along the pile and back to plain cream in the shade. Against it the drawing is worked in burgundy, rust and a bright pumpkin orange, with navy blue outlining a good deal of the detail and a soft grey-lavender used for the smaller leaves, which keeps the hot colours from running together. The olive green of the border is the one quiet colour on the rug, and it does the work of settling the orange and red inside the field.

Making

Hand-knotted with a wool pile on a cotton-coloured warp visible at the ends, where the fringe is left plain and short. The reverse, shown with a tape measure across it, is clear enough that the pattern reads fully from the back. The rug is new and the table records its condition as perfect, with full pile height and no reduction at the edges or ends.