Rugsville Oushaks Traditional Floral Brown Wool Persian Carpet 12' x 18'

Oushak takes its name from a weaving region in western Anatolia that produced carpets for European drawing rooms from the late fifteenth century onward. Holbein painted them under Henry VIII, Lotto painted them under the Doges, and Vermeer set them on the tables of Dutch merchants. The classical Oushak vocabulary, soft palmettes drawn at large scale, restrained borders, a dominant ivory or warm earth ground, became the template for an entire genre of decorative carpets that survives in production today. The brown-ground floral here belongs squarely in that lineage, scaled to a 12' x 18' (366 x 549 cm) drawing-room format.

Five weavers worked this loom over close to nine months. Around 4 million hand-tied Persian asymmetric knots on a cotton foundation. The pile is hand-spun highland wool, drop-spindled so the yarn carries the slight irregularity that gives an Oushak its patina rather than the mechanical evenness of mill yarn. The dyes were prepared in copper vats from walnut hull for the brown ground, madder root for the rust accents, weld for the soft yellow palmettes, and indigo for the cool guard band, each dye matured two to three weeks before the wool was lowered.

The composition

A warm walnut brown ground holds an open repeat of large palmettes and connecting vine. The palmettes are drawn at the generous scale that distinguishes an Oushak from a Heriz or a Tabriz, you read three or four palmettes across the width of the rug rather than thirty. The border is restrained, a single indigo guard band against an ivory turn, the way the original sixteenth-century Oushaks were drawn. The brown will lighten over the next decade as the wool ages, the rust will mellow, and the ivory will warm into bone.

What you are buying

Antique Oushaks from the late nineteenth century at this 12' x 18' scale, with comparable condition and palette discipline, sell at Christie's, Sotheby's, and Rippon Boswell between $25,000 and $60,000 when they appear. This is a new weaving in the same tradition, on the same kind of loom, in hand-spun vegetable-dyed wool to the same density. The rug appreciates with use rather than depreciating. No other object placed on a floor holds that property at any price.

The piece in a room

12' x 18' (366 x 549 cm) is the canonical formal scale, the rug for a long dining room with a twelve-seat table, an open drawing room with two facing sectionals, or a library hall with a central reading bench. The brown ground takes limewashed walls in bone, plaster ochre, or warm grey. It pairs with walnut, oak, and dark-stained pine floors, with brass and bronze, with leather upholstery in cognac or oxblood. Direct sunlight helps the pile, UV restores the dye depth.

Conservation

Rotate a half turn every spring and autumn so light and foot traffic age the wool evenly. Vacuum weekly on suction only with the beater bar disengaged. Blot any spill with a clean cotton cloth, never rub. A wool-trained conservator should hand-wash the rug every five years. Cared for this way, the carpet runs ninety to a hundred and twenty years and outlives the household that commissioned it.

Reference

• Medium: hand-knotted hand-spun wool on cotton foundation
• Dimensions: 366 x 549 cm (12' x 18')
• Construction: Persian asymmetric knot
• Hands: 5 weavers, ~9 months
• Pile: 9 mm
• Dye: vegetable (walnut, madder, weld, indigo)
• Origin: India

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