9'7" x 13'9" Super Kazak Rug | Ruby Red Triple Medallion Geometric | Fine Silky Wool, Brand New

This is a large, freshly woven Super Kazak measuring 9'7" x 13'9", hand-knotted in Afghanistan with a cotton foundation and a fine silky wool pile that already has a low sheen straight off the loom. Three big medallions march down a ruby red field, flanked by gold and indigo octagons, and the whole thing is framed by a wide ivory border that lifts the red instead of closing it in. The pile is even, the selvedges are tight, and the back shown in the detail photographs is clean and regular, which is exactly what you want to see in a rug of this scale. It works as the anchor piece under a 10 or 12 seat dining table or across a full living room seating group, and at this size it sits comfortably among 10x14 area rugs. Every rug we ship leaves Freeport with a certificate of authenticity confirming it is genuine hand-knotted work.

Design and Motifs

The field carries 3 large diamond medallions on the long axis: two navy grounded lozenges built from stepped, saw-tooth outlines around an 8 petal rosette, and between them a paler ivory and sky blue medallion with a vertical prayer-niche style panel at its center. Each medallion is finished with hooked scroll returns at the top and bottom points and a comb-tooth fringe of short bars along its edges, a drawing device pulled straight from old Caucasian village work. Six smaller octagonal cartouches, gold centered with 8 pointed stars, fill the corners and the side spaces, and small crab-like rosettes, 4 armed florets and single stars scatter across the open red ground so nothing reads as empty. The border system runs 5 bands deep: an ivory main border of large stepped stars alternating with rosette roundels, flanked by indigo diamond-and-star minor bands and a fine reciprocal outer stripe. Everything is drawn in straight lines and angles, which is what puts this piece squarely in the family of geometric area rugs rather than the curvilinear floral school.

Ruby Red Field With Ivory, Indigo and Gold

The ground is a deep ruby red with a faint natural variation across the width, the gentle tonal movement you get from hand-spun wool taking dye slightly differently from batch to batch. Against it the palette is built on 3 strong notes: a warm undyed ivory that fills the wide main border and the center medallion, a dark indigo that outlines the two end medallions and the minor border bands, and a saffron gold that lights the octagon centers and the rosette petals. Between those sit softer supporting tones, a chalky sky blue in the stepped motifs, a dusty rose in the small border blossoms, a brick red in the star arms, and touches of olive and yellow-green in the florets and outer stripe that keep the red from going flat. Seen from above the rug reads red and cream; up close, as in the medallion detail shots, it is a much more layered palette. Practically, that mix of red field and ivory border is forgiving underfoot and settles easily with walnut, oak, stone and warm white walls.

Origin, Weaving Town and Quality

Kazak is a design name before it is a place name. The pattern language came out of the Caucasus, and today the best hand-knotted examples are woven in northern Afghanistan, where weaving families around Mazar-i-Sharif and Andkhoy revived the old drawings under the Super Kazak label using highland wool and hand-spun yarn. That wool is the reason these pieces wear the way they do: long staple, high lanolin, and silky enough to take a soft sheen with use rather than looking fuzzy. This example is a good grade of the type, with well controlled knot lines, crisp motif edges at every step and angle, and a heavy, tightly packed handle for its size. As an Oriental rug it belongs to the village and tribal tradition rather than the city workshop one, and it is priced as a rug you buy to walk on for 40 years, not to keep behind glass.