12' x 15' French Aubusson Rug | Flat Weave Wool | Ivory & Black Floral Medallion | Brand New

This 12' x 15' French Aubusson rug takes its whole vocabulary from 18th century French salon weaving: a wide oval floral medallion, rose garlands looped over pale blue ribbon, and a near-black border loaded with ivory acanthus and shell palmettes. It is woven flat, with no pile to blur the drawing, so the shading in every rose and leaf stays as sharp as a painted cartoon and the rug sits almost flush with the floor. That low profile is why decorators reach for this style in formal rooms where a door has to clear, and at this scale it sits with the oversize rugs rather than the standard room sizes. The piece is brand new, never used, in perfect condition, and it ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a bouquet of open roses, tulips and small blue blossoms on an ivory ground, ringed by a ribbon and stave band, then a full wreath of pink and burgundy roses, then a feathered laurel band, so the medallion reads as a series of concentric oval frames rather than a single shape. Four ivory lattice panels fan out at the diagonals, each capped with a rose swag, and 4 small rosette roundels tied with white bows sit at the midpoints of the dark ground, one on each side. The corners are given over to strapwork cartouches with scrolled acanthus, a shell finial and an urn-like device drawn in camel and brown. Beyond the inner dark band the outer border alternates ivory ovals of paired roses with brown lattice fill, and a narrow dark guard band with stylized quatrefoils holds the whole composition together. The reverse, visible in the folded corner shots, shows the same drawing in mirror, which is how a flat tapestry weave is meant to look.

The Color Palette: Ivory, Rose and Near-Black

The field is a warm ivory that shifts toward cream and pale wheat where the light catches the weft, with all the scrollwork and framing drawn in camel, antique gold and a deeper walnut brown. The flowers carry the color: dusty rose and blush pink petals, a few deep burgundy roses for weight, rust and apricot buds, and small blue-gray blossoms with ribbons in the same cool tone that keep the palette from going entirely warm. Foliage runs from sage to a deeper emerald green, and that same green tone is what gives the wide border its cast, reading as black in most light with a dark green depth where the wool has sheen. Against that near-black ground the ivory acanthus and the white bows stand out with real contrast, which is what makes this colorway feel dressed rather than pastel. Cream, brown, rose and black together suit a formal room with dark wood, gilt frames or a marble hearth.

Origin and Weaving Quality

Aubusson is a town in central France whose workshops wove flat tapestry floor pieces for the aristocracy from the 17th century onward, and the design tradition long outlived the original looms. This example was made in China, where the best workshops for this technique now sit, and it is honest about that: hand woven in wool on a cotton foundation, each block of color laid in by hand and joined to the next, with the fine outlining and graded shading that separate a serious Aubusson from a printed imitation. Anyone comparing this to a knotted piece should read up on what actually separates a Persian from a wider Oriental rug, because technique, not just country, is the dividing line. The finishing here is clean throughout, with tight hand-overcast selvages, even edges on all 4 sides and a flat, supple handle, and at 12 feet by 15 feet the drawing stays in scale across a very large floor.