11'8" x 18'7" Oushak Design Oriental Rug | Ivory Field, Camel Gold Border | Hand-Knotted Wool, New

This is a true palace-scale piece, 11'8" x 18'7" of hand-knotted wool on a cotton foundation, woven in India in the Oushak manner and never used. The field is a warm ivory that reads almost champagne under showroom light, and the drawing floats across it rather than crowding it: big serrated palmettes, open vine scroll, small blossoms scattered in the ground. A wide camel gold border carries oversized rosettes and lotus heads, and a narrow navy outer edge frames the whole thing cleanly. At this footprint you are looking at one of the smaller pool of genuine oversize hand-knotted rugs on the market, and it ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming it is hand-knotted, not machine made or tufted.

Design and Motifs

The layout is a classic all-over floral design with no central medallion, built on a lattice of slim gold vines that meet at 8 petal rosettes. Along each axis sit the big set pieces: shield-shaped palmettes in brown and navy with feathered outlines, green and teal fan palmettes with rose centers, and long pale caramel serrated leaves laid in mirrored pairs. Small cypress sprays, tulip buds and curling tendrils fill the ground between them so the ivory never looks empty. The main border repeats a large rosette flanked by broad lotus leaves on a camel ground, with a blossom-and-vine guard stripe on each side and a fine reciprocal minor stripe at the navy edge. Corners resolve properly, which is one of the quickest ways to read the care taken in the drawing on a piece this large.

Color: Ivory Ground with Camel Gold and Jewel Accents

The field is a soft ivory with a faint buttery cast, the kind of neutral that sits comfortably on oak, walnut or pale stone. Against it the palette is warm but restrained: camel gold in the vines and the main border, cinnamon brown and rust in the large palmettes, deep navy used as an outline color and again on the narrow outer edge. The accents do the interesting work, muted teal and sage green in the leaf fans, dusty rose and old burgundy in the flower centers, mustard gold in the rosette hearts, with small touches of cream and slate grey in the smaller blossoms. Because almost every shade is softened rather than saturated, the rug reads light from across a room and only shows its full color range up close.

Woven in India: Oushak Drawing at Palace Scale

India is where most of the world's best contemporary hand-knotted work is now made, and this piece shows why: even knotting across nearly 19 feet of length, straight sides, a level 3/8" wool pile and clean color separation with no bleed. Weaving an Oriental rug at this size takes a loom and a team that most workshops simply do not have, and it takes months of continuous work with one weaver group so the tension and the shade lots stay consistent from the first row to the last. The Oushak vocabulary it borrows, large-scale palmettes, open ground, soft coloring, was chosen for exactly this kind of scale, which is why the design still breathes at 11'8" x 18'7" instead of turning busy.