10'1" x 14' Indian Mahal Design Rug | All Over Floral on Tomato Red | New, Never Used

Lay out a room at 10'1" x 14' and this is the footprint the piece was drawn for: a genuinely large format that carries an all over field without the pattern feeling squeezed. The design is Mahal, a repeating floral lattice of serrated rosettes and curling vine, hand-knotted in India with a heavy wool pile on a cotton foundation. It has never been on a floor, so the pile stands at full height, the ends are square and the colors are exactly as they came off the loom. Every piece leaves us with a certificate of authenticity, and this one sits right in the middle of the 10x14 Oriental rugs buyers ask for most.

Design and Motifs

There is no central medallion here. The field is an all over floral design built from rows of large serrated rosettes, each one outlined in a contrasting shade and set between smaller 8 petal stars, lotus heads and bud sprays. Linking them are hooked vine arms that curl back on themselves, a drawing that reads as half geometric and half floral depending on how far away you stand. The main border is a wide run of palmettes and rosettes joined by a thin vine, with curved serrated leaves swinging off the stems. Inside and outside that sit ivory guard bands of small leaves and blossoms, and a narrow green and ivory zigzag stripe runs right at the edge on all 4 sides.

A Tomato Red Field Against a Near Black Border

The field is a warm tomato red, a shade with brick and rust in it rather than pink, and it shifts noticeably with the light across a rug this long. Against it the main border reads almost black, a midnight navy so deep that only the salmon and sage drawing inside it gives the color away. The rosettes are where the palette opens up: ivory, buttery gold, soft sky blue, deep forest and sage green, salmon pink, aubergine and black, each one a slightly different combination so no two rows repeat exactly. Ivory guard borders and the ivory cotton fringe lift the whole thing, which is what keeps a dark bordered rug from looking heavy in a bright room. Good pick for anyone shopping red and burgundy rugs.

Made in India: Weaving and Quality

This is an Oriental rug in the proper sense of the term, hand-knotted in India, where most of the world's best contemporary workshop weaving is now done. The weaving towns around Jaipur specialize in exactly this kind of work: classical drawing, vegetal-toned palettes and a thick, tightly packed wool pile meant to take decades of traffic. Turn the corner over and the back is even and regular, knot row after knot row on a cotton warp, with no lazy lines and no puckering. The pile is dense enough that a footprint disappears when you brush it, and the selvages are tightly overcast in red wool. For a room this size, that combination of weight and honest hand knotting is what you are buying.