9'2" x 12'6" Bokhara Oriental Rug | Navy Blue Field with Geometric Turkoman Guls | 1970s Wool Pile

Bokharas are almost always woven on a red ground, which is exactly why this one stops you. The field here is a deep indigo navy, and against it the rows of octagonal guls read in madder red, rust and ivory with a clarity you rarely get from the standard colorway. It is a 1970s piece, hand-knotted in 100% wool on a cotton foundation, roughly 50 years old and still in excellent condition with a full, even pile and clean, straight sides. At 9'2" x 12'6" it covers a full seating group without crowding it. Every rug we ship carries a certificate of authenticity documenting the weave, materials, origin and age.

Design and Motifs

The field carries the classic Turkoman gul, the quartered octagon often called the elephant foot, repeated in tight ranks and linked by fine red grid lines that run the full length and width of the rug. Each gul is quartered into red and ivory panels filled with hooked and stepped devices, and between the rows sit small ivory cartouches and stylized cross forms that keep the repeat from ever going flat. This is textbook all-over drawing, with no medallion and no open ground, so the eye travels across the whole rug rather than settling in the middle. The border system is unusually generous: a wide main band of radiating star rosettes in ivory and orange on blue, framed by many narrow guard stripes of diamonds and triangles in red and charcoal. Both ends finish with a bold latch-hook panel in the tradition of tribal kilim skirts, then ivory fringe. Collectors of geometric rugs will recognize how disciplined the spacing is across a piece this wide.

The Navy, Madder Red and Rust Palette

The ground is a true indigo navy, cool and slightly smoky, with gentle abrash that shifts a shade lighter in bands as the weaver moved through different dye lots. Sitting on it, the guls are outlined in near-black charcoal and filled with two distinct reds: a deep oxblood madder in the quarters and a brighter rust orange in the hooked interior devices. Ivory does the heavy lifting for contrast, picking out the small cross motifs, the star rosettes in the main border and the zigzag guard stripes. The borders reverse the balance, running a deep burgundy red ground against navy and ivory detail, which frames the cooler field and gives the rug real weight at the edges. In the room photograph the overall impression reads as a warm plum-red from a distance, with the blue emerging as you get closer, so it works over wood floors and beside leather, linen or walnut without fighting anything.

Bokhara Weaving in Pakistan

Bokhara takes its name from the Central Asian market city where Turkoman tribal weavings were traded, and the design traveled south with weaving families who settled in Pakistan, where it became the country's signature production. This is a genuine hand-knotted Oriental rug from that tradition, made in the 1970s when the wool quality and vegetal-leaning dye work were at their best, well before the market filled with thin commercial copies. The knotting is fine and even, the pile is clipped low so the small ivory devices stay legible, and the back shown in the fold photograph is tight and regular from end to end. Fifty years of use have done nothing to the structure, which is what you expect from a densely woven wool pile on cotton. Among large area rugs in this size class, a navy-ground Bokhara of this vintage is the harder one to find.