9'6" x 12' Kazak Oriental Rug | Caucasian All Over Floral Lattice | Tomato Red & Ivory

This 9'6" x 12' Kazak is a brand new, never used hand-knotted piece from Pakistan, woven on a cotton foundation with a 5/16" wool pile and drawn in the Caucasian idiom that gives the Kazak group its name. The field is tomato red and carries a continuous lattice of palmettes, rosettes and serrated leaves rather than a single central medallion, which is why it reads as calm from standing height and busy only when you crouch over it. At 114" by 144" it is a true room size Oriental rug, comfortably in the 9x12 Oriental rug bracket with a little extra width. Every rug we ship leaves with a certificate of authenticity recording size, material, weave and origin.

Design and Motifs

The field is an all over design built on a thin olive and ivory vine that runs on the diagonal and links one motif to the next. Inside that grid the weaver alternates 4 lobed indigo palmette clusters, ivory octagonal rosettes with coral petals, small hooked diamonds holding an interlaced cross, and pairs of stiff serrated leaves that spring away from each junction like little flames. The drawing is deliberately angular, straight lines and stepped outlines rather than curved vine work, which is the Caucasian signature and what separates a Kazak from a city floral. The main ivory border carries an upright procession of lotus palmettes and tulip sprays, alternating red, indigo and green heads, framed by a narrow green inner band and an indigo outer guard stripe filled with rosettes and hooked trefoils. Collectors of geometric rugs will recognize the border rhythm immediately, and the 4 corners are resolved cleanly, which is not a given in this drawing.

A Tomato Red Field Against Ivory and Indigo

The ground is a warm tomato red with a slight brick undertone, and because the wool takes dye unevenly from fleece to fleece there is a gentle horizontal variation across the field that softens the whole surface. Against it the border reads as a true undyed ivory, closer to cream than to white, carrying red, deep indigo and a dusty sage green in the palmette heads. The motif palette inside the field is tighter than it first appears: dark indigo for the large palmettes and lattice diamonds, a muted salmon coral for petal centers and rosette interiors, soft sea green for the small leaf sprays and flower heads, and ivory for the outlines that keep every element legible against the red. Touches of butter yellow appear in the border flower centers. The 5/16" wool pile has a healthy sheen in the close-up photographs, so the reds shift lighter or deeper depending on which way you walk the nap.

Kazak Weaving in Pakistan

Kazak is a design name before it is a place name. The drawing comes out of the southern Caucasus, and for the last several decades the finest reproductions of it have been woven by hand in the weaving centers of northern Pakistan, where workshops keep the old cartoons alive and use good highland wool with a long staple. This piece is a straightforward example of that work: hand-knotted knot by knot on a cotton foundation, with an even, well packed back and a clean selvage and finish, as the ruler photograph shows. The weave is a village grade rather than a fine city grade, and that is the point, because the heavier knot and the 5/16" pile are what let a Kazak take years of real traffic in a 9'6" x 12' room without flattening. It is new, never used, and will darken and gloss slowly with use rather than wear thin.