12' x 17'9" Jaipur Oriental Rug | Black Tabriz Medallion Design | Dense Lustrous Wool, Brand New

At 12' x 17'9", this hand-knotted Jaipur rug is built on palace scale: 213 inches long and 144 inches wide, enough floor to sit a 12 seat dining table with the chairs pulled back, or to hold an entire seating group with every furniture leg on wool. The pile is dense, evenly clipped and noticeably lustrous, so the black ground reads as deep matte in one direction and softly reflective in the other. Shoppers looking at 12x18 oversize rugs know how rarely a piece this large arrives in perfect, never rolled out condition. This one is brand new, and it ships with our certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The drawing follows the Tabriz court medallion formula, executed with curved line rather than village angles. A round central rosette sits inside a cream cartouche, its core an 8 petal flower ringed by small scrolling palmettes and paired bird-like tendrils. From there the black field runs in a continuous system of arabesque vines, serrated acanthus leaves, split palmettes and small five petal blossoms, mirrored across both the long and short axis so the two halves of the rug answer each other exactly. The 4 corner spandrels are cut in cream and filled with the same vinework at larger scale, their shaped edges outlined in a fine camel line. The main border is black and carries alternating standing palmettes and curling leaves, framed by tan guard stripes of linked rosettes and a narrow inner band of tiny lozenge cartouches. Nothing in the layout is filler; every open span of the field is resolved with drawing.

Black Ground, Cream Spandrels and Olive Foliage

The field is a true black, not charcoal and not a very dark navy, which is what gives the pattern its unusual contrast and lets the lighter colors sit on top like inlay. Against it the palette is warm and earthy: cream and ivory in the spandrels and medallion cartouche, camel, tan and antique gold through the vines, and a wide range of green from sage and pistachio to deep olive in the leaves. Soft rose and old mauve appear in the palmette hearts, with small hits of terracotta rust and burgundy red used sparingly as accents, plus touches of brown in the heavier leaf forms. The tan guard borders and gold minor stripe carry the warmth out to the selvedge, and the hand-tied fringe finishes in natural ivory cotton. In lamplight the whole rug leans gold; in daylight the greens come forward.

Woven in Jaipur, India

Jaipur, in Rajasthan, is the center of India's finest contemporary hand-knotting, and India is where most of the world's good new hand-knotted work is made today. There is no reason to be shy about that: the looms there are wide enough for a piece of this width, the workshops still draw from classical cartoons, and the wool is spun and dyed for depth rather than speed. This is an Oriental rug in the strict sense of the term, knot by knot on a cotton foundation, with the back showing clean, regular rows and crisp color changes right through the fine border bands. A 213 square foot field like this takes a team of weavers well over a year on the loom, which is why genuinely new oversized rugs of this quality are made in small numbers and sell quickly.