11'6" x 18' Chinese Needlepoint Rug | Burgundy Floral Aubusson Design | Oversize Handmade

This is a big, generous room piece: 11'6" x 18' of handmade Chinese needlepoint, worked entirely in wool over a cotton backing, with a deep burgundy ground carrying a dense garden of roses, tulips, lilies and open peonies from edge to edge. The surface sits flat and low, so the drawing reads like embroidered fabric rather than a deep pile rug, and furniture settles on it without rocking. At this scale it belongs in a great room, a formal dining room or a long gallery, and it is one of the larger pieces in our selection of oversized rugs. Condition is perfect, with clean edges, a straight rectangular shape and no repairs visible in any of the photographs. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity that records the origin, materials, size and construction of the exact piece you receive.

Design and Motifs

The field is an all over floral in the Aubusson taste, which means no medallion and no repeating grid: the flowers are drawn as a naturalistic bouquet that keeps unfolding across the whole 18 foot length. Full blown cabbage roses and cream peonies sit alongside curled tulips, star shaped blossoms, small clustered hydrangea heads and long feathered leaves, each one shaded in several tones so the petals look rounded rather than flat. Instead of a wide formal border there is a narrow ribbon frame, a set of three stripes in blue, ivory and tan that mitre neatly at each of the 4 corners, visible in close detail in the corner photograph. Outside that ribbon the floral drawing continues to the very edge, which is why the design reads as a continuous panel rather than a rug with a picture inside a frame. It is a decorator's pattern, drawn for large formal rooms where a busy medallion layout would fight the furniture.

Burgundy Ground with Rose, Ivory and Olive

The ground is a true burgundy, a warm red with brown depth in it rather than a bright scarlet, and it is left mostly visible only in the small gaps between blossoms, so the overall impression is red seen through flowers. On top of it the roses and peonies are worked in ivory, clotted cream and buttery beige, with softer rose pink and blush used for the smaller buds and for the shaded undersides of the larger petals. Foliage runs olive and sage green, with darker moss tones used for the shadowed leaves and a few brown accents at the leaf tips. The quiet surprise is the powder blue: it appears in the small star flowers dotted through the field and again in the outer stripe of the ribbon border, and it is what keeps the red and cream from feeling heavy. Under warm light the ivory reads closer to champagne, while daylight brings out the pink and the blue.

Chinese Needlepoint Workshops and Build Quality

Needlepoint of this type is made in China by workshops that took up the 18th century French Aubusson and Savonnerie vocabulary and have produced it at a very high standard for decades, which is why the format is a staple of American interior design and why it sits comfortably in the broader Oriental rug family. The wool is worked stitch by stitch in fine gauge over a cotton ground, a slow process on a piece this size, and the quality shows in the shading: each rose carries 4 or 5 tones of the same color, and the curved stems hold their line without stepping. The reverse, shown in the last photograph, is finished with a plain cotton cloth backing and the edges are bound straight, which is the correct construction for a needlepoint of this weight. Shipping is free in all 50 states, and pieces in the 12 x 18 oversize range travel with no freight surcharge.