11'9" x 14'5" Jaipur Oriental Rug | Black Field, Rust Border | Never Used, Made in India

A room-filling 11'9" x 14'5" hand-knotted Jaipur rug, made in India, with a black ground that carries an all-over floral vine and a broad rust main border. The wool pile stands at 3/8", full and even from selvage to selvage, and the drawing stays crisp everywhere the vine turns, which is what separates a workshop-grade Oriental rug from a production piece. It has never been on a floor, the ends and sides are original and tight, and the color is fresh right through the pile. Anyone shopping oversize 12x14 hand-knotted rugs knows how few come up in a dark ground with this much gold in the pattern. It ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming the hand-knotted construction, wool pile and Indian origin.

Design and Motifs

There is no medallion. The field is a true all-over floral design, a continuous system of thin gold vines that loops across the whole black ground and hangs large fan-shaped palmettes, split lotus blossoms and 8 petal rosettes off every turn. Between the big flowers sit serrated leaves, small buds and tiny paired birds worked in cream and green, and the whole layout mirrors left to right so the pattern reads as ordered rather than busy. The rust main border runs a bold arabesque of cloud-band scrolls and shield-shaped palmettes, each one centered on a green rosette, and it is fenced on both sides by narrow ivory guard stripes filled with small stylized flower heads and vine tips. The corners resolve cleanly, with the border arabesque turning at 4 corners instead of being cut off, which is a drawing decision that takes real planning at this width.

Black Ground with Rust, Gold and Green

The field wool is a deep black that photographs with a faint blue-black cast in close-up, and it does the heavy lifting here: against it, the saffron gold and ivory palmettes read almost lit from within. The main border is rust moving toward oxblood, warm rather than bright, and the guard stripes are a soft butter ivory that keeps the rust from crowding the black. Inside the flowers you get spinach and teal green in the leaves and rosette centers, rose pink and salmon in the petal shading, a dark wine red in the smaller blossoms, and a clear yellow gold in the vine itself. The shading is done with two and three tones per flower, so the petals turn from cream to pink to rust across a single motif. On a dark floor or dark stone the black ground grounds the room; on light oak or pale travertine the rust border becomes the dominant note.

Jaipur Weaving and Quality

Jaipur, in Rajasthan, is one of the workshop centers that made India the place where most of the world's good contemporary hand-knotted work is now produced, and this rug is a straightforward example of why: a cotton foundation, well washed wool with real luster, and a knot count high enough to hold curved vine and shaded petals without the outlines going blocky. The back shown here is flat and regular, the rows are consistent, and the black selvage is wrapped by hand. A piece this size weighs well over 100 lbs and still ships free to all 50 states, no freight surcharge. Look at the pile depth in the rolled detail: at 3/8" it has enough body to take decades of traffic in a dining room or a large open living area, and the dark ground is forgiving in exactly the places a pale rug is not.