12'2" x 18'2" French Aubusson Flat Weave Rug | Ivory & Green Tapestry Medallion | Never Used

This 12'2" x 18'2" piece is a full palace-scale reading of the French Aubusson tapestry tradition, worked entirely by hand in fine wool on a cotton foundation and never laid in a room. The weave is flat rather than plush, so the drawing stays crisp: you can follow a single acanthus stem from the corner of the field all the way into the medallion without losing the line. At 146" by 218" it belongs in the category of oversized rugs that anchor a great room, a long formal dining room or a hotel lobby, and it sits squarely in the classic 12 x 18 rug footprint. It ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming the handmade construction, materials and measurements.

Design and Motifs

The composition is built around a large round medallion set inside a squared frame with cusped corners. At its centre sits an ivory roundel carrying interlaced strapwork, a small ruby lozenge, 4 fleur-de-lis and 4 crowns, one at each of the 4 cardinal points, surrounded by loose bouquets of roses, cornflowers and carnations. A ring of laurel and a beaded gold band enclose that roundel, and 4 large open rosettes mark the axes of the outer circle. Above and below the medallion, framed pictorial panels break the formality: a mountain landscape with a river, rocky banks, a leafy tree and a small structure in the distance, drawn in the manner of an 18th century tapestry cartoon. The open field is given over to sweeping acanthus scrolls, each one curling into a shell-like volute and trailing flower sprays and grape clusters. The inner guard is a fine ribbon twist; the main border runs a repeating chain of long ovals set between blue acanthus leaves, and a plain brown outer band closes the whole design cleanly.

Ivory, Celadon Green and Antique Gold

The palette is deliberately soft and slightly faded in the French manner. The field is a warm ivory with a cream to oatmeal cast, and the medallion ground shifts to a pale celadon green that cools the centre of the room. Antique gold and camel carry all the structural drawing: the medallion frame, the beaded bands, the scroll spines and the oval border ground. Greens range from sage and olive in the acanthus leaves to a deeper moss in the landscape trees. Accents arrive in small doses, terracotta and dusty rose in the flower heads and the border ovals, muted indigo and slate blue in the leaf tips, the guard stripes and the river water, with a few points of deeper red in the crowns. A quiet brown selvage band frames everything. Nothing in the colouring shouts, which is exactly why a rug this large reads as calm rather than heavy.

Aubusson Weaving and Where This Rug Was Made

Aubusson is a town in central France whose workshops supplied tapestry-woven floor coverings to French interiors from the 17th century onward, and the vocabulary seen here, the crowned medallion, the acanthus rinceaux and the framed landscape panels, comes straight out of that repertoire. This example was made in China, where the flat tapestry technique has been kept alive at a scale and standard that very few workshops attempt today. Weaving a 12'2" x 18'2" tapestry panel with no pile to hide behind is unforgiving work: every curve and every colour change is exposed, the loom has to stay true over more than 18 feet, and a single team may spend many months on one piece. The result is a low, dense, flat surface that lies quietly under furniture and shows its drawing from across the room. If you are weighing this against a knotted piece, our guide to what separates a Persian rug from an Oriental rug is a useful place to start.