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

The Oushak tradition emerged in western Anatolia in the late fifteenth century and reached its second peak in the workshops of the Ottoman court four centuries later. What separates a real Oushak from its many imitations is restraint. Large fields of low-saturation colour, oversized floral medallions drawn with the looseness of a brush rather than a pen, and a soft palette built around natural greys, ivories, and faded madder. The piece in front of you carries that drawing logic into a contemporary scale.

Five weavers shared the loom in India for nine months. The pile is hand-spun wool laid against a cotton foundation, the knots tied row by row with the asymmetric loop that the Anatolian workshops used to keep the field soft and slightly irregular. The dye lots were prepared in small copper pots from indigo, oak gall, and walnut hull, then tested against sample skeins for two weeks before the wool was committed.

The composition

Soft grey ground that drifts toward warm putty under lamplight. Open floral cartouches drawn loosely in cream and oxidised silver, anchored at the centre by a faded medallion that does not insist on itself. The border is a single ivory band with vine work in muted graphite. The grey is not a single colour. It is twelve shades of dyed wool combined on the loom, which is what gives the field its slow visual movement.

What you are buying

Period Oushaks of comparable scale and condition trade at international auction in the range of forty to ninety thousand US dollars when they appear, which they rarely do in this size. This is a new weaving tied on a vertical loom in India in the same fibre and to the same density as its nineteenth-century antecedents. The rug appreciates with use rather than depreciating. Few categories of object share that property.

The piece in a room

12' x 18' (366 x 549 cm) is a banquet-hall scale. The rug expects a long dining table with twelve to sixteen seats above it, or a double seating arrangement in a great room where two sofas face one another across a low table. Limewashed walls hold the grey palette. The wool also reads beautifully against pale oak parquet and against polished Indian sandstone.

Conservation

Rotate by half a turn each spring and autumn so the field ages evenly under foot traffic and light. Vacuum weekly with suction only and the beater bar disengaged. Blot spills with a clean cotton cloth and never rub the pile. A trained wool conservator should hand-wash the rug every five to seven years. With this care the piece will outlive its first three owners.

Reference

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

Free shipping anywhere in India. Cash on delivery available. 7-day exchange. The rug arrives crated for safe long-term storage.