9'2" x 12'3" Pakistani Bokhara Rug | Wool | Rose

A hand-knotted wool carpet from Pakistan, measuring 9'2" x 12'3" and rectangular in shape. The field is rose, closer to a soft brick where the light runs along the pile, and it is filled edge to edge with rows of octagonal medallions outlined in black. Seven narrow and wide bands make up the border, which takes up a good third of the width at each end. Among rugs of this kind it is the sheen of the wool that registers first: the ground reads paler or deeper depending on where you stand.

Design

This is a Bokhara, and it keeps to the pattern strictly. The guls are flattened octagons, each quartered by a black cross and filled with hooked forms in gold and ivory, set in even columns down the length of the field. Between the rows sit smaller cross-shaped motifs, more open and airy than the guls themselves, which stop the repeat from closing up. The border runs to several bands: a wide outer one carrying a lattice of diagonal black and gold wedges, a middle band of eight-petalled rosettes spaced along a dark ground, and between them a series of thin guard stripes of stars and dots. The ends finish in a plain rose kilim and ivory fringe.

Colour

The field is a rose that sits between old brick and dusty pink, and it does most of the work here. Against it the drawing is almost entirely black, used as outline rather than mass, with ivory and a clear saffron gold filling the interiors of the guls and the border rosettes. Towards the outer bands the ground darkens into brown, so the border reads heavier than the field and frames it without a sharp break. The fringe and the woven reverse are cream.

Making

Hand-knotted in Pakistan with a wool pile, clipped low enough that the outlines stay crisp in the close photographs. The back, visible where the corner is turned in one image, shows the knots in even ranks and the pattern legible through the foundation. The carpet is new and in perfect condition, with full pile and undisturbed ends, and at 9'2" x 12'3" it falls among the larger room sizes.