9'10" x 13'6" Super Kazak Oriental Rug | Ivory Field, Triple Medallion | Fine Silky Wool, Brand New

This 9'10" x 13'6" Super Kazak has never been on a floor. It is hand-knotted in fine silky wool on a cotton foundation, and it handles like workshop production rather than village work: the sides run dead straight, the ivory field holds its width from end to end, and the pile is clipped low enough that every zigzag outline stays razor sharp. At just under 10 feet by 13 and a half it is one of the genuinely practical 10x14 Oriental rugs, big enough to carry a full seating group or a 10 seat dining table with chairs pulled back. The hand-spun wool has a faint sheen that shifts the field from pale gold to cream depending on where you stand, which is exactly what you want in a large light-ground piece. It ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

Three linked medallions run down the center of the ivory field: a navy diamond in the middle, drawn with latch hook arms around a small 8 petal star, flanked by two brick rust lozenges with stepped outlines and hooked interiors. Around them the weaver has filled the ground with a museum-style inventory of Caucasian devices, hooked octagons, small stepped cross medallions, pale blue rosette panels, 8 point stars, tuning fork motifs and triangular pendants that point inward from all 4 corners. The ivory panel is cut off by a serrated rust and navy border that steps like a staircase, and that in turn sits inside a deep navy ground scattered with rosettes, comb motifs and large green and ivory star flowers at the corners. The wide sky blue main border carries a scrolling hook and vine pattern with small red star flowers, framed by narrow guard stripes of boxed rosettes in green, gold and apricot. It is a disciplined piece of drawing for a design family usually built on improvisation, and it belongs firmly among geometric rugs rather than the curvilinear floral schools.

A Study in Ivory, Navy and Rust

The field is a warm ivory with a golden undertone, closer to raw fleece and light honey than to chalk white, and it lightens noticeably where the pile catches the sun. Against it sit two very different blues: a dark, almost black navy in the surround and inner border, and a clear medium sky blue in the wide outer border, softened by the natural abrash you can see in the close-up photographs. The reds range from a deep brick madder in the two flanking medallions to a brighter tomato rust in the serrated bands and small stars. Supporting colors are used sparingly and to real effect, forest green in the corner star flowers and guard stripe boxes, apricot orange in the vine scrolls, soft gold in the rosettes, and pale powder blue in the small filler medallions. The overall reading in a room is light and warm, with the navy doing the work of grounding the piece.

Kazak Drawing, Woven in Pakistan

The Kazak design vocabulary comes out of the southern Caucasus, where tribal weavers worked in bold geometry, big medallions and strong primary color. Today the finest interpretations of it are woven in Pakistan, where the best workshops spin their own wool by hand, dye it in small lots and weave at a knot count far above what the original village pieces ever carried. That is the difference the Super Kazak name signals, and you can see it here in the clean diagonals, the tiny 3 and 4 knot filler motifs and the even, low clipped pile shown in the folded corner photograph. If you are weighing this against a city workshop piece, our guide to what separates a Persian rug from an Oriental rug is worth reading first. This one is brand new, unused and structurally perfect, with full pile, tight selvedges and clean hand-knotted fringe at both ends.