8' x 10'4" Pakistani Ziegler Rug | Wool | Green and Gold

This is a 8' x 10'4" rug knotted by hand in Pakistan with a natural wool pile. The field is a soft green, closer to sage than to grass, and it is held inside a wide border the colour of dry straw. Seen from the end of the room it reads as two large blocks of colour, green inside gold, with the drawing only resolving into flowers as one walks up to it. The hand-knotted pile is cut low, so the outlines stay crisp.

Design

The Ziegler layout here has no medallion. The field carries an all-over arrangement of large palmettes, long serrated leaves and small rosettes, strung on thin vines that mirror from side to side and repeat up the length. Two sizes of flower do most of the work: broad fan-shaped blooms with toothed edges, and small four-petal rosettes scattered in the spaces between. The main border runs a meandering vine with alternating palmettes and open flower heads, and it is framed by narrow guard stripes of a repeating scroll figure. In the corners, as the close photographs show, the vine does not quite resolve into a matching corner piece, which is normal in this family of weaving.

Colour

The dominant tone is a muted green that shifts between sage and olive depending on how the light crosses the pile. Against it the border is a warm straw gold, deep enough to count as camel in the angled views. The drawing is outlined in rust and a dark red-brown, with coral and a pale apricot filling the larger blooms and small touches of soft pink in the border flowers. Nothing is high contrast: the palette stays within a narrow warm range, and the green field is the only cool note in it.

Making

Hand-knotted in natural wool, in a rectangular format, with the pattern visible clearly on the reverse, which is what the folded-back corner photograph shows. The selvedges are bound in a greenish wool and the ends finish in short ivory fringe. The rug is new and the spec table records its condition as perfect.