11'8" x 17'8" Agra Oriental Rug | Black Field, Ivory Floral Border | Fine Wool Pile, Never Used

At 11'8" x 17'8" this is a genuine palace-scale floor piece, hand-knotted in India in an Agra design with a 3/8" wool pile on a cotton foundation. The field reads almost pure black and carries an all-over flowering scheme with no central medallion, so the pattern runs unbroken from end to end and the broad ivory main border frames it like a picture. Size is the real decision here, and buyers shopping oversize 12x18 rugs know how few pieces are woven honestly at this length; the edges here stay straight and the drawing keeps its rhythm across all 212 inches. It is an Oriental rug in the classical sense, new and never used, and it ships with our certificate of authenticity confirming it was knotted entirely by hand.

Design and Motifs

The field is a classic all-over floral layout: staggered rows of large spoked palmettes, each one drawn with a pale center and radiating petals, alternating with smaller rosettes, half-open lotus heads and long serrated leaves. Thin ivory vine scrolls link the whole arrangement and mirror themselves along the vertical axis, so the design repeats without ever looking mechanical. The main border is wide and does a lot of the work, running a meandering vine through round 8 petal rosette medallions and long saz leaves outlined in burgundy. Inside it sits a narrow sage guard stripe of small flower heads, and a zigzag guard in ivory and dark brown separates the border from the black outer edge. The close-up of the corner shows how cleanly the border turns: the rosette resolves squarely into the corner rather than being cut off, which is the mark of a properly drawn cartoon rather than a rushed copy.

Black Field, Ivory Border and the Colors Between Them

The ground is a deep, saturated black with only the faintest movement in tone across the width, the kind of variation you get from natural wool taking dye in separate lots. Against it the flowers are worked in ivory, oatmeal and pale straw, with secondary shading in sage green, soft olive, warm taupe and a muted dusty rose that reads pink in the detail photograph and quiet gray-brown from standing height. Small touches of deep burgundy appear in the leaf stems and at the base of the palmettes and tie the field to the border. The border itself is a creamy ivory, warmer than the flowers in the field, with its vine drawn in olive and burgundy. The result is a high-contrast rug that anchors a large pale room, and it works just as well with dark woods, brass and black metal as it does with white walls and cream upholstery.

The Agra Tradition and the Weaving

Agra, in northern India, was a Mughal court weaving center from the 16th century, and the format it gave the world is exactly this one: a dark ground, a dense all-over flowering pattern and a generous framing border, drawn at a size meant for large halls. India remains the place where most of the world's good contemporary hand-knotted work is now made, and this rug shows why. The wool is well spun and clipped to an even 3/8" so the palmettes hold a crisp outline, the knotting is regular enough that the pattern rows stay level across a 140" width, and the selvedges and kilim ends are finished by hand, visible in the back photograph beside the ruler. Weaving at 17'8" long takes a purpose-built loom and a team working the same row for many months, which is why honest oversized hand-knotted rugs in this class stay scarce. This one is brand new, unused, and ready to lay flat.