Hello Alex,

Hopefully I can help you on your inquiry of this rug.

From the standpoint of a rug person it's tough to determine information on whether or not a rug is a real Oriental Rug or not from one single photo like this. Usually we would need several photographs the front, and close up photograph of the revers to determine authenticity, origin and other.

However, to give you a general assessment, in terms of design, I think this rug would fall into the category of what many people refer to as the "elephant footprint." This "elephant footprint" is characterised by the isolated design elements in the field, which are also called "guls." However, this particular elephant footprint, or gul, is not to be confused necessarily with a bohkhara gul, although they are in a similar family. If I were to identify this rug, I would call it a Jaldar or something alike. These are the key terms you will want to research in making your shopping experience easier:

Similar carpets to consider...

Jaldar or "Double Knotted" rugs: These are produced in Pakistan, they are of significantly courser quality. Jaldar rugs are particularly floppy, tend to have colors of rose, dark rose, black, sometimes even bright red. Often they are highlighted with a bright faux silk accent around the guls and throughout the border. These rugs tend to be very affordable, inexpensive, and subsequently, not of particularly great quality in general. These rugs are usually characterised by their four sided diamond shaped guls quite similar to the photograph you have presented above. Expect to spend $2 a square foot to as much as $10.

Jaldar Example
http://cgi.ebay.com/RUST...DVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Bokhara: These rugs vary greatly in quality as the design has been highly integrated into weavings from all over the world, particularly Pakistan, Afghanistan and India... Remember, just because the rug is from a certain country does not determine the quality. The design is usually characterized is usually 8 sided similar to a vertically squashed stop sign with a little more curve, and elongated width wise. In other words, very oval in shape. There are collector rugs which are often labeled as "tekke" rugs. Be wary when searching on ebay however, as often the case with rug names, these tekke and bokhara labellings are used interchangeably which should not be the case as the former has implications of an older vintage bokhara design.

Bokhara Example
http://cgi.ebay.com/FINE...DVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Afghan Pieces or Baluchi: Afghan pieces tend to have a much larger, more circular gul than the bokhara pieces. Afghan pieces also tend to use less quantity of colors, and those which are used are often power colors: black & red, yellow & black, etc. Baluchi pieces also have this repeating pattern as well and probably worth looking into.

Afghan Example
http://rover.ebay.com/ro...&mtid=824&kw=lg