12' x 18' Oversize Oriental Rug | Soltanabad All-Over Floral | Gold Field, Brand New

At 12' x 18' this is a true palace-scale floor piece, hand-knotted in 100% wool on a cotton foundation and finished with hand-tied ivory fringe at both ends. The drawing is a Soltanabad all-over composition, a classic Oriental formula of lotus palmettes and curled leaves marching across an open gold ground, held by one wide ivory palmette border between rose and gold guard stripes. It has never been on a floor: the pile stands full and even, the selvedges are tight, and the colors are exactly as woven. Rugs that cover this much ground are hard to find in good drawing, and harder still brand new, which is why pieces in the oversized rugs group move quickly. A certificate of authenticity accompanies the rug, documenting construction, materials, size and origin.

Design and Motifs

There is no central medallion. Instead the field carries a repeating all-over floral lattice built from broad 8 petal lotus palmettes, smaller 6 petal rosettes, tulip buds and long curled saz leaves, all connected by thin arabesque vines that reverse direction from one row to the next. Each palmette is outlined twice, once in dark brown and once in a thin oxblood line, which is what keeps the pattern legible across 18 feet of length rather than dissolving into texture. The ivory main border runs a stately procession of shield palmettes flanked by serrated leaves, and it is framed on both sides by a rose-tan guard stripe of small rosettes and a fine sawtooth ribbon in olive and brown. The outermost band returns to plain gold, so the design finishes cleanly against the floor instead of ending on a busy line.

The Gold, Ivory and Olive Palette

The field is a warm antique gold, closer to honey and dry camel than to yellow, and it carries a soft abrash in the floor photographs where the wool takes light differently from one section to the next. Against that ground the drawing is worked in ivory and cream, sage and olive green, a muted rose that sits somewhere between clay and dusty pink, tan and cinnamon, and a very dark brown that reads almost black in the outlines and in the sawtooth ribbon. Small points of deep red appear at the center of the larger palmettes, just enough to give the pattern a pulse. The ivory border is the brightest element in the rug and pushes the gold field forward visually. It is a quiet, warm, low-contrast scheme that works with wood tones, brass, cream upholstery and dark antique furniture, and it does not fight a room that already has pattern in it.

Made in India: The Soltanabad Tradition and the Weave

This rug was hand-knotted in India, which is where most of the world's good contemporary hand-knotted work is now made, and the workshops there have made the Soltanabad style of all-over floral drawing their own. Calling it an Oriental rug is the correct term for a hand-knotted piece of this tradition made outside Persia. The back photograph shows straight, regular knot rows on a cotton foundation with no pulling at the corners, and the fold shows a substantial, well packed handle: heavy enough to lie dead flat once it is set, which matters at this scale. The pile is a good medium height with an even shear, so the outlines stay crisp. Buyers working at this footprint usually shop by the constraint first, and this piece sits squarely in the 12 x 18 oversize rug range, with free freight delivery to all 50 states on a rug that most sellers surcharge.