10' x 13' Chinese Art Deco Rug | Plum Burgundy Field with Flowering Vases | 1940s

This is a genuine 1940s Chinese Art Deco piece, hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation, and it has the two things collectors look for in the type: a deep plum burgundy field left almost entirely open, and drawing that stays quiet instead of crowding the ground. The pile is thick, soft and evenly clipped, with the slightly waxy sheen that good Chinese wool develops with age, and the color has mellowed rather than faded. At 10' x 13' it covers a full seating group with the sofa legs on, which puts it squarely in the most requested large format we carry, our 10x13 rugs. If you are weighing this style against other weaving traditions, our guide to what separates a Persian rug from an Oriental rug is worth reading first. Every rug ships with a certificate of authenticity documenting origin, age, materials and construction.

Design and Motifs

The composition is classic Art Deco restraint. A single lobed medallion sits at center, a navy cartouche filled with small gold blossoms and ringed by orange arabesques, teal peony heads and dark curling leaves. Around it the field is left open except for eight flowering arrangements, tall footed jardinieres and low lattice-sided vases with prunus branches, peonies and chrysanthemums spilling out of them, plus a scattering of small navy and gold butterflies that give the empty ground rhythm without filling it. The border system is triple: a wide midnight navy main band carrying stylized kylin figures, urns and blossoming sprays in mulberry, teal and gold, framed inside and out by camel tan guard stripes woven with black shou longevity roundels and angular Greek key fretwork. The inner guard repeats a lighter running fret against the same tan ground, and the corners resolve cleanly, which is a sign of a workshop cartoon rather than an improvised village drawing.

The Plum Burgundy Field and Its Accent Palette

The dominant color is a saturated burgundy with a distinct plum cast, richest where the pile lies away from the light and warming toward raspberry where it lies toward it, so the open ground shimmers as you cross the room. Against that the borders drop to a near-black midnight navy, which is what makes the tan bands read as clearly as they do: a soft camel, closer to dried apricot than to gold, outlined throughout in true black. Inside the motifs the weaver used a full accent range, burnt orange and amber in the medallion and the vase bodies, two distinct blues (a mid indigo and a bright teal) in the flower heads and the lattice work, and soft mulberry pink in the border scrollwork and the kylin figures. The whole palette is dark, deliberately so, which is why it sits so well with navy velvet, walnut floors and brass, as the room photograph shows.

Chinese Deco Weaving of the 1940s

Rugs like this were produced in the northern Chinese workshops around Peking and Tientsin for the Western market, where Deco taste asked for open fields, flat color blocks and traditional Chinese motifs simplified down to their graphic essentials. The construction is honest workshop work: a stout cotton foundation, a single row of knots per row of weft visible on the reverse in the folded corner photograph, and a heavy wool pile clipped thick enough to carve a faint outline around the motifs, the sculpted contour that identifies the type at a glance. Eighty-odd years of use have left the pile full and the ends and selvages sound, which is unusual at this size, and the weave and drawing together are consistent with the 1940s dating given here; the signals we read to reach that conclusion are laid out in our guide on how to date an Oriental rug.