12' x 17'9" Oversize Oriental Rug | Traditional All-Over Floral | Sage Green & Black | Never Used

This is a palace piece in the plainest sense: 12' x 17'9" of hand-knotted wool drawn in the classical all-over floral tradition, woven in India on a cotton foundation and finished at a scale very few workshops still attempt. The field is a muted sage green, the main border is jet black, and the drawing that runs between them is carried in gold, rust and ivory with a quiet burgundy underneath. The rug has never been on a floor: the pile stands full and even from one end to the other, the selvedges are tight, and the hand-tied ivory fringe is still crisp. At 12 feet wide it sits with our oversize 12x18 rugs, the size for a great room, a long formal dining room or an open plan floor where a 10x14 leaves the furniture stranded. It ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The weaver chose an all-over floral design instead of a single central medallion, which is the right decision at this length, since the pattern reads the same from every seat in the room and nothing gets swallowed by a sofa. Rows of broad gold palmettes alternate with paired serrated leaves that sweep upward like open wings, and the spaces between them are filled with small hexagonal cartouches ringed in ivory around a black core, 8 petal rosettes, and scattered star flowers in rust and cream. Fine vine scrolls link one row to the next so the whole field moves in a continuous lattice. The black main border runs a steady rhythm of curling acanthus and large flowering palmettes, framed on both sides by gold guard stripes carrying a meandering vine, and the outer edge closes in the same olive green as the field so the frame is complete on all 4 sides.

A Sage Green Field Framed in Black

The field is a soft sage that pulls toward olive in raking light and toward a dusty celadon under a window, one of the more useful tones in green area rugs because it sits comfortably with both warm wood and cool grey stone. Against it the main border reads as near ink black with no blue cast, which gives the room a hard, confident edge. Most of the drawing is carried in two golds, a deep wheat and a lighter honey, and those are warmed by rust and terracotta through the palmette petals. Burgundy runs as an outline color, shading the leaf bases and the small lozenges, while ivory is used sparingly for highlights on the cartouche rings, leaf tips and the innermost guard stripe. The outer edge and selvedge are a darker brown olive, and the fringe is natural ivory cotton. It is a warm, low-contrast palette overall, dark enough to hide traffic and quiet enough to live under a large dining table.

Woven in India in the Classical Tradition

India is where most of the world's good contemporary hand-knotted work is now made, and we say that with no hedging: the best Indian workshops weave the classical drawing accurately, on proper cotton warps, in genuine handspun wool, and they are among the very few still willing to set a loom this wide. This is a traditional Oriental rug in the full sense of the term, hand-knotted row by row rather than tufted or machine made, and the back tells the story better than the front: the knot rows are straight, the tension is even across 12 feet of width, and the pattern shows through cleanly on the reverse. The wool has a good natural luster and takes the light differently as you walk around it. A floor piece of this size takes a team of weavers the better part of a year, and the evenness held across 17'9" is exactly what that year buys.