9' x 12'3" Pakistani Rug | Traditional Red and Black All-Over Floral | Signed 18/18 Quality

A workshop piece that never made it to a floor: this 9' x 12'3" hand-knotted wool rug is in perfect, unused condition, with a full 3/8" pile, crisp selvedges and hand-tied ivory fringe at both ends. The weaver signed it, and the small cartouche sits in the upper border where the black ground meets the sage guard stripe, which is the kind of detail a workshop only adds when it is confident in the piece. At an 18/18 weave, roughly 324 knots per square inch, the drawing holds its curves cleanly across a field this large, and the reverse shown in the last photograph reads almost as sharply as the face. It is one of the more honest values in 9x12 rugs of this weave class, and it ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

There is no central medallion here. Instead the weaver worked an all-over floral design across the whole red field, built from open cabbage roses, lobed palmettes, tulip forms, small 8 petal rosettes and long serrated leaves carried on thin curving vines. The layout mirrors on both axes, so the same rose spray that sits left of center reappears to the right, and the 4 corners of the field close with a small spandrel arch drawn in the same vocabulary rather than a plain block of color. The main border is the counterweight: a black ground running a continuous chain of palmettes and paired blossoms, framed by narrow sage green guard stripes that repeat a simple rosette and leaf meander. Because the pattern is curvilinear rather than angular, the rug reads formal and quiet from standing height and only gives up its detail when you are close to it.

A Deep Red Field Against a Black Border

The field is a deep brick red with a slight cherry warmth in daylight, and the wool takes enough sheen that the tone shifts from a rich burgundy to a brighter red as you walk around it. Against that ground the weaver used a restrained palette: ivory and cream for the rose petals and the outlines that keep the drawing legible, rose pink and soft salmon for the larger blossoms, and a muted sage to teal green for the leafwork and the guard stripes. The main border goes almost fully black, close to a blue-black in the corner photographs, which frames the red field hard and makes the pale flowers along the border read like embroidery. Small touches of light blue and gray appear inside the palmettes. The red and black pairing is dominant enough to set the tone of a room, while the ivory and green keep it from feeling heavy.

Woven in Pakistan: Workshop Quality and Weave

Pakistan's workshops built their reputation on fine, evenly beaten wool weaving in the classic traditional repertoire, and this is a good example of that work. Pakistani weavers quote fineness as a pair of numbers, so 18/18 means 18 knots across each inch of warp and 18 along each inch of weft, which works out to about 324 knots per square inch, well above the loose commercial grades and fine enough to carry the tight rose heads and thin vine work you see here. The foundation is cotton, the pile is wool at 3/8", and the back shows straight, regular rows with no pull or waving along the sides, which is the mark of a properly tensioned loom and a single team finishing the piece. If you are weighing this against other origins, our guide on Persian rugs vs Oriental rugs explains where a signed Pakistani weave like this one sits.