10' x 17'3" Agra Rug | Soltanabad All Over Floral Design | Rust, Beige Gold & Green | Brand New

This is a genuinely long room rug: 10 feet wide and just over 17 feet of rust red field, hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation in Agra, India, and never laid in a home. The drawing is a Soltanabad all over floral, palmettes and curling vines climbing the full length of the field rather than gathering into a central medallion, which is exactly what you want at this length because the pattern stays readable no matter where the furniture lands. The wool has the slightly matte, clean handle of good new Indian weaving, with a medium pile that already shows a soft light-and-shadow shift when you walk around it. Sizes like this belong in the world of oversize hand-knotted rugs, where finding a piece in perfect, unused condition with a coherent design at 17 feet is far harder than finding a 9x12. Every rug we ship carries a certificate of authenticity confirming it is 100% hand-knotted, along with its size, material and origin.

Design and Motifs

The field carries an all over floral design built on a lattice of thin gold vines. Large fan shaped palmettes alternate with broad serrated leaves and smaller cusped blossoms, each one drawn in outline so the rust ground reads through the motif instead of being smothered by it. Between the big forms sit small rosettes, tulip sprays and a repeated little fountain-like flowering plant that you can see clearly in the close-up photographs. The main border is generous, roughly 14 inches across, and runs a turning vine of 8 petal rosettes flanked by paired leaves, with the leaves alternating between sage green, camel and soft brown so no two repeats look identical. Two narrow guard stripes of small four petal florets and reciprocal hooks frame the border on both sides, and the corners resolve cleanly rather than being cut off mid-motif, which is the mark of a cartoon drawn properly for this specific length.

Rust, Beige Gold and Quiet Green

The field is a warm rust red, closer to brick and terracotta than to a cool cherry, and it is not flat: the wool carries a gentle abrash so the tone moves slightly lighter and slightly deeper along the length, which is what keeps 17 feet of red from looking printed. Against it the motifs are worked in ivory cream and a soft beige gold, with camel and honey used for the vine stems and leaf bodies. Green appears as an accent rather than a main color, a muted sage that turns up in the serrated leaves, in the petals of the border rosettes and in the small flowering sprays on the field. The wide border is a pale straw beige gold, several shades lighter than the field, and the rosette centers punctuate it with small notes of deep burgundy and rust. The outer edge finishes in a thin rust red guard with natural ivory fringe. Taken together it is a warm, low-contrast palette that sits easily on dark hardwood and reads as much gold as red in daylight.

Agra Weaving and the Soltanabad Tradition

Agra has been a carpet town since the Mughal court set up imperial workshops there in the 16th century, and the city still anchors one of the best hand-knotted weaving belts in the world. India is where most of the world's good contemporary hand-knotted work is now made, and pieces like this are the reason: full wool pile, cotton warp and weft, a properly drawn cartoon and clean, even knotting from end to end. The Soltanabad pattern the weavers followed here comes out of the classic village workshop repertoire, an open all over floral rather than a formal court medallion, and it suits Agra wool well because the design rewards a slightly chunkier, softer line. Turn a corner over, as in the photographs, and the back shows tight rows and a legible pattern, with straight sides and squared ends across the full 17 feet. If you are weighing the differences between this and a Persian piece, our guide on Persian rugs vs Oriental rugs lays out what actually separates them.