9' x 12'3" Pakistani Bokhara Rug | Wool | Red and Ivory

A rectangular room-size carpet at Width: 9' x Length: 12'3", hand-knotted in Pakistan with a soft wool pile. The field is a single expanse of red carrying close-set columns of octagonal medallions, and the whole thing is framed by multiple narrow borders and a wide diagonal lattice panel at each end, finished with plain ivory cotton fringe.

Design

The Bokhara layout here is worked tightly: rows of flattened octagonal guls, each quartered by a fine black outline and filled with hooked and stepped figures, sit shoulder to shoulder across the field with small cross and arrowhead motifs standing in the gaps between them. The borders run in several thin bands of reciprocal chevrons and dotted stripes, with one wider band of square compartments holding eight-pointed star rosettes. At the head and foot the design opens into a broad elem panel of diagonal lattice, each diamond filled with tiny crosses, which reads almost like a separate piece of weaving against the density of the field.

Colour

The ground is a deep saturated red that darkens towards oxblood where the pile lies away from the light, and the gul interiors carry most of the contrast: ivory and soft brown in the drawing, with black and a pale blue-grey holding the outlines and the smallest filler shapes. The end panels shift the balance, putting more brown and grey against the red so that the two ends sit quieter than the centre.

Making

Knotted by hand in Pakistan in soft wool on a cotton foundation, with the fringe left as the warp ends at each end. The pile is even and close cropped, so the gul outlines stay crisp, and the rug is new, listed in perfect condition.