10' x 14' Oriental Rug | Sheikh Safi Medallion Design | Fine Silky Wool | Made in India | New, Never Used

This is a large, formal, hand-knotted Oriental rug in the classic Sheikh Safi drawing, woven in India in fine soft silky wool on a cotton foundation and never put on a floor. At 10' x 14' it covers a true room-size footprint, and the weaver kept the drawing tight enough that the whole field stays legible from standing height: a domed medallion at the centre, ivory cartouche accents at the axes, and an unbroken vine system running corner to corner. The wool has a low, dense, slightly glossy handle that you can see in the rolled-edge photographs, and the pile is even from selvage to selvage with straight sides and clean hand-tied ivory fringe. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming that it is genuinely hand-knotted, along with its measurements, material and origin. Buyers working with a 10 x 14 footprint can browse more options in our 10 x 14 rugs collection.

Design and Motifs

The Sheikh Safi pattern takes its name from the shrine complex at Ardabil, the source of the most famous medallion design in the history of floor weaving, and this version follows the formula closely. The centre is an 8 petal blue-green rosette set inside a ring of ivory arabesque scrollwork, which is itself framed by a 16 point black star medallion with curling ivory tendrils. Four ivory quatrefoil panels sit on the diagonals, and two woven vase motifs with rising flower sprays anchor the long axis above and below the medallion, clearly visible in the close-up photographs. Around them the field carries an all-over system of thin scrolling vines, small palmettes, serrated leaves, rosettes and bud clusters that never repeat in an obvious grid. The border scheme is a wide black main band of rosettes and leaf turns, flanked by a gold-ground guard stripe of small floral heads and a pair of slate blue minor stripes, with the field colour carried out to a plain burgundy outer edge.

Burgundy Ground with Black, Blue-Green and Gold

The field is a deep wine burgundy, closer to oxblood than to bright red, and because the silky wool reflects light it shifts from near-black in the shadowed photographs to a warm claret under direct light. Against that ground the drawing is worked in black, ivory, gold, olive and a soft slate blue, with the green reading as a muted blue-green in the medallion rosette, the leaf work and the scattered floral heads across the field. The main border is a true black, which gives the rug a hard, graphic outline and makes the gold guard stripe read as a bright line of separation. Ivory appears in controlled doses only, in the arabesque ring around the medallion, the four corner panels and the small quatrefoils, so it lifts the composition without breaking it up. The overall effect is dark, formal and evening-toned, the sort of colour balance that settles a large room rather than competing with it.

Woven in India to Workshop Standards

India is where most of the world's good contemporary hand-knotted work is now made, and this rug is a fair example of why: the knotting is fine enough to carry curved vine work and small floral heads at scale, the pile is clipped low and level so the drawing stays crisp, and the cotton foundation gives the rug the flat, heavy lie you want in a 10 x 14. The back photograph shows tidy, regular rows with good knot definition and no slack areas, and the corners of the design resolve correctly on all 4 sides, which is the first thing to check on a large medallion piece. The wool has been spun and finished for softness and sheen rather than for the dry, coarse handle of village weaving, which is where the silky surface comes from. Brand new and never used, with full pile and intact fringe, this one is at the start of its life rather than the end of it.