12' x 16' French Aubusson Rug | Cocoa Brown Field, Peacock Fan Corners | European Wool, 1980s

This is a large, serious room rug: 12' x 16' of hand-knotted wool woven in Europe in the 1980s after the French Aubusson and Savonnerie court models. The pile is a full 1/2" of wool on a cotton foundation, heavy enough to lie dead flat and to take the traffic of a formal dining room or a great room without flattening at the edges. What sets it apart from the usual pastel Aubusson copy is the field: an almost chocolate cocoa brown, unusually dark for this design family, which makes the rust and burgundy medallion read like a lit panel in the center of the floor. Pieces this size belong with our oversize 12x16 rugs, and this one arrives in perfect condition with its certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The drawing is pure French salon. A rust ground medallion fills the center of the field, its burgundy core holding a tied bouquet of roses, tulips, bellflowers and ribbon work, wrapped by a ring of cream acanthus scrolls and small rosettes. Feathered plumes fan out from the 4 points of the medallion, and matching half medallions anchor the top and bottom of the field. Across the open brown ground, ivory leaf garlands curl into loose wreaths, each one tipped with a rose bud or a turning tulip, drawn in the light, airy way that separates good Aubusson work from stiff copies. The 4 corners carry the motif that makes this rug memorable: enormous ivory peacock fans, each feather eye picked out in teal and salmon, spreading from a small shell base into the field. The border is a stacked band system, a cream stripe of pink blossoms outside, a rust ribbon and roundel stripe, then a wide sage panel of open roses in pink, wine and cream, all separated by fine teal and black guard lines.

A Dark Cocoa Field with Rust, Burgundy and Rose

The field is a deep cocoa brown with an aubergine undertone, so dark that in the overhead photographs it reads nearly black at the edges and warms to coffee where the light crosses the pile. Against it, the medallion is a soft terracotta rust that shades toward salmon at its outer ring, with a burgundy center that is the strongest note in the rug. The garlands and peacock fans are worked in beige, ivory and pale straw, with sage and teal greens in the leaves, so the drawing floats rather than shouts. Smaller touches carry the palette across the whole floor: dusty rose and wine roses in the border, powder blue and teal flower heads, muted olive stems and small lilac accents in the medallion bouquet. It is a warm, low-contrast brown scheme that behaves like a dark hardwood floor, forgiving in a busy room and flattering to gilt, walnut, mahogany and cream upholstery.

European Weaving in the Aubusson and Savonnerie Tradition

The historic Aubusson workshops of central France wove flat tapestry rugs, while the Savonnerie manufactory wove knotted pile for the royal palaces. This piece takes the Aubusson drawing, the garlands, the rose bouquets and the fan corners, and executes it in knotted pile in the Savonnerie manner, which is why it has body and depth that a flatweave of the same design cannot give you. The back photograph shows an even, disciplined knot line with straight rows and no pulled selvages, the mark of a workshop loom rather than a village piece, and the weaver kept the 1/2" pile uniform across 16 feet of length, which is not easy at this width. If you are weighing how a European piece like this sits beside a hand-knotted Oriental rug, the short answer is that the construction is the same craft and only the design vocabulary changes.