The Karakul Collection

Karakul is our name for a small, closely selected group of new rugs hand-knotted in Afghanistan, where weaving is still very much a household craft rather than an industry.

What holds the collection together is not one pattern but one standard. Every piece is chosen by us individually, for its drawing, its colour and the evenness of its knotting, and every piece is one of a kind: the rug you see is the rug you receive. Browse the full Karakul collection.

Design

The field is laid out in three columns of large medallions, five rows deep. Hooked octagons with arrow-shaped cores — teal and pine green on the left, saffron and indigo on the right, ivory and coral at the head and foot — alternate with stepped cruciform stars in cobalt, madder red and sea green. Between them sit small diamond lozenges, rosettes and scattered sprigs, and two pairs of ivory ram's-horn motifs flank the central octagon.

The drawing follows the village rugs of the Caucasus — bold, geometric, easy to read from across a room — but the palette is softer and the spacing more generous, so the pattern never crowds. A wide apricot border carries an open scatter of rosettes, leafy sprigs and small hooked forms, held in by narrow saffron guard stripes.

Colour

The ground is a warm rosewood — somewhere between dusty rose and old terracotta — with a gentle abrash that moves across it in soft horizontal bands. Against it the medallions bring clear accents of teal, saffron, indigo and madder, while the apricot border lifts the whole piece at the edges.

It is a palette that sits easily with oak floorboards, brass, linen and limewashed walls, and holds its own both in a period drawing room and in a contemporary open-plan space.

Material and Quality

The pile is 100 % wool, handspun and coloured with natural plant dyes, hand-knotted onto a cotton foundation. Handspun yarn takes dye unevenly by nature, and that is where the soft abrash across the rosewood ground comes from — every band of colour is a trace of a separate dye lot.

At approximately 250,000 to 360,000 knots per square metre — roughly 160 to 230 kpsi — the drawing stays crisp right down to the small hooks and sprigs. The pile is kept short at 7 mm, so the geometry reads cleanly from any side of the room, and at around 28 kg the rug has the weight to lie flat and settled on the floor.

In the Room

At 272 × 379 cm (8 ft 11 in × 12 ft 5 in, 10.3 m² / 111 sq ft) this is the classic 9 × 12 ft room size:

• Sitting room or drawing room: takes a full sofa group with every front leg on the rug, in rooms from about 4 × 5 m (13 × 16 ft) upwards.
• Dining room: suits a table of up to about 250 cm (8 ft) seating eight, with the chairs still on the rug when pulled back.
• Kitchen-diner or open-plan living: anchors the seating area and gives a large, hard-floored space a warm centre.

The warm rosewood ground belongs in a Cotswold stone house: a low-beamed sitting room with a fire, or a panelled study, where it brings warmth that cooler colours cannot — and it reaches the Cotswolds or London within 2–7 working days.

Specifications

Responsible Origin · Label STEP

Djoharian is a Label STEP Fair Trade Partner. Label STEP is the international fair-trade organisation for hand-knotted rugs, standing for fair pay for the weavers and no child labour.

Djoharian — Since 1967

Our family business was founded in 1967, with roots in the Grand Carpet Bazaar of Tehran — five decades of trade and connoisseurship behind every piece we offer.

Delivery, Service and Care

Every piece is inspected in our atelier in Lohr am Main, Germany, before dispatch. Secure and fast worldwide shipping, fully insured. We are happy to send further photographs or a short video of the rug in daylight, and offer personal consultation in our showroom or by video call. For expert washing and repair we run our own professional rug cleaning service.