10' x 13'10" French Design Needlepoint Rug | Grapevine & Rose Bouquet Flat Weave | Perfect Condition

A flat weave needlepoint in the French taste, worked stitch by stitch in wool on a cotton canvas and finished with no pile height at all, so the drawing reads like a painting rather than a carpeted surface. At 10' x 13'10" it covers a full dining or living room and still keeps the airy, pale look that makes needlepoint so easy to live with, which is why it sits comfortably among 10x14 area rugs for formal rooms. The piece is recent, never used and in perfect condition, with the original weaver's tag still attached at the back corner reading rug no. 5506, size 10 x 13.10. It ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The whole rug is built around a grape arbor. Slim wooden trellis poles run up through the wide border, and from them hang heavy clusters of grapes, broad five lobed vine leaves and thin tendrils that curl back on themselves. At each of the 4 corners sits a full bouquet: open roses, apricots and pears, white blossom sprays and more grapes, arranged as though just set down on the trellis rail. Small butterflies and bees are tucked between the leaves, easy to miss until you are standing over the rug. The center is deliberately quieter, an all-over vine pattern of pale leaves and scrolling stems that thins out toward the middle so furniture can sit on open ground rather than on top of the drawing.

Ivory Ground with Green, Rose and Brown

The ground is a warm ivory that shifts toward pale wheat and oatmeal as the light moves across the flat surface. Over it the vine leaves are worked in a whole family of greens: soft sage, olive, moss and a deeper forest green in the shadowed leaves, with several leaves turning brown, tobacco and plum as if late in the season. Grapes are painted in pale celadon and cream with faint gold highlights, which is what gives the border its glow. The flowers supply the only strong color in the rug, dusty rose and salmon pink roses with coral and apricot fruit beside them, plus small white and cream blossoms. Brown carries the trellis poles and the fine stem work, tying the border to the field.

Origin and Weaving Quality

This is an Oriental rug made in China in the European needlepoint tradition, a workshop specialty there for generations and still the source of the best hand worked needlepoint made today. Instead of knots tied on warps, the wool is stitched through a cotton canvas in tight even rows, so shading can be graded a stitch at a time. That is what lets a leaf move from sage to brown across its own width and why the roses look modeled rather than outlined. The back, visible in the last photograph, shows the regular stitch grid and the original hand woven Oriental rug tag. The result is a thin, dense, hard wearing floor covering with no pile to crush, which suits dining chairs and door clearances as well as it suits the design.