9' x 12' Bokara Rug | Classic Repeating Gul Design | Fine Silky Wool, Brand New

This is a brand new 9' x 12' Bokara, hand-knotted in fine soft wool with a 3/8" pile on a cotton foundation, and it is one of the cleanest examples of the classic gul layout we carry in a room size. The back label stitched to the selvage states 100% wool pile, genuine hand-knotted, made in Pakistan, and the weaving piece number is still attached, which is how a new, unused piece reaches us from the loom. The wool has the slightly silky handle that good Bokara weavers are known for, so the surface picks up light differently depending on where you stand. As a true room size, it belongs with other 9x12 Oriental rugs rather than with scatter pieces, and like every hand-knotted Oriental rug we sell it ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The field carries the classic Bokara formula: rows of octagonal guls, the quartered medallion that collectors call the elephant foot, drawn in tight staggered columns from end to end with no central medallion at all. Between the rows sit small cruciform stars and stepped leaf forms that lock the grid together, so the eye reads one continuous all-over design rather than separate motifs. Each gul is outlined twice, first in near-black and then in ivory, which is what gives the field its crisp, beaded look in the close-up photographs. The border system is unusually deep for a piece this size: several narrow checkerboard and hooked guard stripes frame a main band of alternating round rosette cartouches, and beyond that a wide flatweave-style panel of zigzags and squared diamonds finishes both ends above the ivory fringe. All of the drawing is straight-line and angular, so it sits comfortably alongside other geometric rugs and reads as orderly rather than busy.

A Soft Ivory Beige Ground With Dark Outlines

The ground is an ivory beige that leans warm, closer to oatmeal with a faint blush cast in daylight than to a cold cream, and because the wool is lustrous it shifts between pale sand and soft peach depending on the light and the direction of the pile. Against that ground the guls are drawn in brown-black and black, dense enough to read as charcoal from standing height, while the interiors of each medallion carry muted green, ivory white and a warm apricot that the close-up photographs show clearly. The narrow guard stripes repeat the same green and ivory in miniature, and the rosette border adds alternating apricot and ivory roundels that lift the darker band around them. The outer flatweave panel brings the green and apricot together one last time over a pale beige base, and the fringe and selvage are clean undyed ivory. The result is a genuinely neutral rug with warmth in it, which is why pieces in this palette sit so easily with beige and ivory rugs already in a room.

Bokara Weaving in Pakistan

The gul design descends from the Turkoman tribal weavings traded through the old market city of Bukhara, which is where the trade name Bokara comes from, and the pattern has been woven to a high standard in Pakistan's hand-knotting centers for generations by weavers who inherited it. The Pakistani version is the refined one: a cotton foundation held at even tension on the loom, a fine knot count that lets the weaver draw clean double outlines around every gul, and a short clipped pile, here 3/8", that keeps the pattern sharp instead of letting it blur. Good Bokara work is judged on exactly what this rug does well, namely whether the gul rows stay square across 9 feet of width and whether the deep border system meets correctly at all 4 corners. The wool itself is the other half of the story, spun fine and left with its natural sheen, which is why a brand new Bokara of this grade already feels silky underfoot before a single year of use. Shop it with the rest of our Oriental rugs.