12' x 15' Chinese Needlepoint Rug | English Garden Floral Panels | Flat Weave Wool, Unused

This is a genuine hand-woven needlepoint in the English garden manner, 45 rose bouquet panels laid out across a soft beige ground in a 7 across grid, and it has never been on a floor. The wool is worked flat in tight stitches with no pile height to speak of, which is exactly why a needlepoint of this size sits so quietly under furniture in a formal room. At 12' x 15' it belongs in the oversize 12x15 rugs group, a piece that covers a full great room or a long dining table with chairs pulled out. The back, seen in the corner and fold photos, shows the clean reverse of the stitching and the original pale green bound edge. Every rug we ship carries a certificate of authenticity confirming that it is handmade, along with its size, material and origin.

Design and Motifs

The field is drawn as an all over panel design: a lattice of grey-taupe scrolling vine ribbon divides the field into rectangular compartments, and each compartment holds its own bouquet. No two bouquets are drawn identically. Some lead with a full blown cabbage rose in deep rose pink, others with a peach-apricot bloom or an olive green rosebud, and all of them sit on a fan of green leaves with sprays of tiny pale blue forget-me-nots and small russet buds filling the corners. The inner guard stripe repeats the same scroll ribbon, and the main border carries a continuous garland of roses, tulip buds and leaves running around all 4 sides, closed by a second scroll stripe on the outer edge. It is the classic English garden and Aubusson vocabulary, informal in feeling but very disciplined in its layout.

A Palette of Beige, Blush Pink and Sage Green

The ground is a warm oatmeal beige, closer to cream in the close-up photographs and slightly deeper in the wide overhead shot. Against it the roses are shaded through at least 4 values, from a pale ivory pink at the outer petal to a saturated raspberry at the heart, with apricot and peach blooms carrying the warm side of the palette. The foliage is a muted sage and olive green rather than a bright leaf green, and small accents of soft powder blue, dusty lilac and a rusty terracotta keep the bouquets from reading as only pink. The scroll lattice and both guard stripes are a soft grey-taupe, which is what holds the whole composition together visually. The outer edge is bound in a pale celadon green that frames the beige field cleanly. It is a quiet, light, pastel palette that works with painted furniture, natural linen and stone floors.

Needlepoint Weaving and Quality

This piece was made in China, the country that took over the great needlepoint tradition and now produces most of the world's serious hand-stitched floor work. Every stitch here was placed by hand in wool over a cotton ground, one point at a time, which is why a 12 x 15 takes a workshop team many months to finish. Because the surface is flat rather than pile, the drawing can be read crisply at close range, as the detail photographs show, and the fabric stays low enough that doors clear it and dining chairs slide easily. Handled this way, a needlepoint is a true Oriental rug in the broad sense of the term, a hand-made floor covering built to be used for decades. The condition here is perfect and the rug is unused, with the original edge binding intact and full, even color across the entire 180 inch length.