12' x 14'10" Serapi Oriental Rug | Ivory Field, Navy Star Medallion | Hand-Knotted Wool, New

At 12' x 14'10" this is a genuine great room piece, hand-knotted one knot at a time in wool on a cotton foundation and never used. The drawing is pure Serapi: a big angular star medallion floating on an open ivory ground, with deep brick red corner spandrels and a navy main border closing the whole thing in. The pile has the slightly glossy handle you can see in the fold photo, and the weave is even and square from selvage to selvage, which matters at this scale because an oversize hand-knotted rug only lies flat if the tension held across 12 feet of width. Every rug we ship carries a certificate of authenticity confirming it is hand-knotted, along with its size, material and origin.

Design and Motifs

The center is an 8 point star medallion in indigo, ringed by a saffron gold surround and stepped sky blue outline, with a small square rosette at the exact middle and paired hooked palmettes reaching out along both axes. Anchor pendants extend top and bottom into the ivory field, which is filled with serrated lance leaves, stiff flowering branches and rosette clusters in green, rust and pale blue, all drawn on straight lines and right angles rather than curves. The 4 corner spandrels are solid brick red carrying scrolling vinework and a small navy cartouche apiece, one of the surest marks of a well drawn Serapi. Borders run in three bands: a wide navy main border of turtle palmettes and hooked vines, an ivory inner guard of paired boxes and rosettes, and a fine caramel outer stripe. If you like geometric medallion rugs, this is the pattern at its most legible.

Color Palette

The field is a warm ivory with a faint cream cast rather than a bleached white, which keeps the contrast soft under lamplight. Against it the medallion works in two blues, a deep indigo core and a lighter sky blue frame, bordered by a broad saffron gold that photographs as old gold in daylight and as honey in the close-up shots. The spandrels and the outer field reserves are a brick red with real depth in the pile, and the main border sits in the same indigo as the medallion core so the eye reads the rug as one composition. Accents do the rest of the work: forest green in the leaf clusters, apricot and terracotta in the small palmettes, and touches of ivory outlining that separates each shape from its neighbor. Dye lots are steady across the width, with only the gentle abrash you want in a wool pile.

Origin and Weaving Quality

This piece was made in India, which is where most of the world's best contemporary hand-knotted work is now produced, and the standard here is high: hand-spun wool, a true cotton warp and weft, hand-tied fringe finished at both ends, and a knot count consistent enough that the stepped outlines stay crisp through the medallion and the border turns resolve cleanly at all 4 corners. The back photo shows tight, regular knotting with no packing or shortcuts. Wool of this grade takes on more luster as it is walked on, and the dense village-style weave makes this an Oriental rug built for decades of daily traffic in a large, busy room.