11'2" x 19' Chinese Peking Rug | Salmon Field, Phoenix Birds & Flowering Vines | Antique Palace Size

This is a genuinely rare thing: an antique Peking room-size piece at 11'2" x 19', hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation and still carrying a soft, even pile across the whole length. The salmon field is left deliberately open, so the drawing breathes, and the deep indigo border frames it like a lacquer surround. Pieces of this format were woven for banquet halls and large reception rooms, and very few survive in this state, which is why we group it with our oversized rugs of palace scale rather than with standard room sizes. It is an antique Oriental rug in the truest sense, and it ships with our certificate of authenticity documenting origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The field is an open garden composition rather than a medallion layout. Thin dark vines climb from the bottom edge and branch across the whole 19' length, carrying lobed blue leaves, small ivory blossom clusters and stylised chrysanthemum heads. Long-tailed phoenix and pheasant figures perch and glide at 6 points across the field, each one drawn with a spotted indigo body and a sweep of pale gold and green tail feathers. Two tasselled lanterns anchor the upper and lower thirds, and at the center sits a roundel built from rockery, a flowering branch and a small perched bird, the quiet focal point of an otherwise spacious field. The navy border is a catalogue of precious objects: vases holding prunus sprays, a censer, a hanging bell, banners, ribbons and scrolling tendrils, with each of the 4 corners given its own object rather than a repeated motif. A camel guard stripe with a curling wave vine separates field from border on both sides, and the ivory fringe at each end is original and intact.

The Salmon, Indigo and Camel Palette

The field reads salmon: a warm apricot pink that shifts toward peach in raking light and toward terracotta in shade, with gentle abrash bands from the dye lots that give the surface depth instead of flatness. Against it the border is a very deep indigo navy, almost black at the pile tips and clearly blue where the wool turns. Between the two runs a camel to tan guard stripe, closer to old gold on the wide outer band and softer biscuit on the narrow inner line. The drawing itself uses at least 4 separate blues, from near-black navy in the leaf silhouettes through mid cobalt and a dusty teal to a pale powder blue in the smaller blossoms. Supporting tones are soft celadon and sage green in the tail feathers and leaf tips, ivory and butter yellow in the blossom clusters and border vases, and small touches of mauve and dusty rose in the border flowers. The result is a warm, luminous floor that behaves like a neutral because the salmon ground is so light, while the navy border does the work of a picture frame.

Peking Weaving and Antique Chinese Quality

Peking is the old name for Beijing, and rugs sold under it came from the city workshops that supplied export houses and grand interiors from the late 19th century into the early 20th. The look is unmistakable and unlike anything woven further west: open grounds, sparse painterly drawing taken from silk embroidery and porcelain, a limited palette built on indigo and warm ground tones, and pile clipped and outlined so each motif stands slightly proud of the field. Weavers used thick lustrous northern Chinese wool on a cotton foundation, which is why the back of this rug shows regular, honest rows and the face still has body after a century of settling. Knot counts in Peking work are moderate by design, since the drawing is meant to be read from across a room rather than examined inch by inch, and the wool quality is what carries the value. If you want to understand how pieces like this are placed in time, our guide on how to date an Oriental rug walks through the dyes, wool and construction clues a dealer looks at first.