11'8" x 15' Oversize Mahal Design Rug | Rust Ziegler All-Over Floral | New Wool Pile

This is a brand new, never used hand-knotted wool rug drawn in the classic Mahal idiom, and at 11'8" x 15" of floor coverage it belongs firmly in the oversize rug category, where a 9x12 simply leaves too much bare floor around the furniture. The field reads a warm rust to coral, the pile is thick and springy underfoot, and the weave is tight and even from selvage to selvage, with a cotton foundation and hand-finished cream fringe at both ends. Scale is what sells this piece in person: the all-over drawing repeats large enough to hold a 15 foot room without the pattern collapsing into noise. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming that it is hand-knotted, along with its measurements, materials and origin.

Design and Motifs

There is no central medallion here. Instead the weaver worked a full all-over lattice of serrated rosettes and stepped palmettes, each one outlined in a contrasting tone so that no two neighbors read alike: ivory rosettes with burgundy and gold petals, navy starbursts on olive ground plates, olive green stepped medallions with blue and coral centers, and small sky blue flowerheads scattered between them. Linking the larger flowers are thin vine stems with hooked, almost calligraphic tendrils in dark brown and teal, a hallmark of Mahal design rugs and of the Ziegler drawing style that grew out of it. The main border is deliberately quiet, a narrow band of alternating cupped flowers and shield shapes in ivory, olive and blue on rust, framed by twin guard stripes in navy and cream. That restraint is the right call on a rug this large, because it lets the field do the talking and keeps the border from crowding the room.

Color: Rust, Coral, Green and Blue

The ground is the whole point. It sits between rust and coral, a warm terracotta that shifts with the light and with the direction of the pile, reading brick in the raking shots and softer salmon in the overhead views. Against that warmth the weaver set deep indigo navy in the large rosettes and mid sky blue in the smaller ones, which is the strongest contrast on the rug. Olive and moss green fill the ground plates of the stepped medallions and the leaf stems, cooling the field without fighting the rust. Ivory and cream carry the highlights: full ivory rosettes, tiny outlining stripes, and the guard bands at the border. Accents of mustard gold, oxblood burgundy, dove grey and a faint blush pink turn up inside the flowerheads, and those small flashes are what keep a 15 foot field interesting at close range. All of it sits on a warm, livable palette that works with wood tones, leather, brass and cream plaster.

Origin and Weaving Quality

This rug was made in India, which is honestly where most of the world's best new hand-knotted work is produced today. The workshops there kept the traditional loom, the hand-spun style wool and the vegetal dye palette going while other markets moved to machines, and the result is a genuine Oriental rug that can stand next to older pieces without apology. The back photo shows clean, regular rows of knots with no crowding at the sides and a straight, well-tensioned selvage, which is exactly what you want on a rug this wide, since 140 inches of loom width punishes sloppy tension. The wool is glossy and full bodied, the pile has weight, and the rug lies flat with square corners. New, unwalked, and built to be used for decades rather than protected.