12' x 25'4" Tibetan Transitional Rug | Wool and Silk | Taupe and Gold

This is a room length carpet at 12' x 25'4", hand-knotted in Tibet in wool with a touch of silk. The ground is a soft grey-brown taupe and the drawing on it is all gold: a continuous vine scroll across the field, a band of small blossoms, then a wide Greek key border on all four sides. From across a room it reads as a single warm neutral. From a step away the vine separates out and the silk in it catches the light.

The design

There is no medallion and no corner piece. The field is given over to an even scroll of curling stems that meet and part again, with rounded rosettes set at regular intervals along them and small cross-shaped leaf sprigs filling the ground between. The scale is large and the line is drawn with soft, almost brushed edges rather than crisp outlines, which is what makes the pattern sit quietly under furniture (image 2 shows it with a sectional and a low table on it). A narrow guard stripe of stylised blossoms separates the field from the main border, and that border is a squared key fret, each unit a single spiral, running the full length of the long rectangle. The vocabulary is Chinese and the handling is contemporary, which is where the transitional label comes from, and why it sits as easily in a plainly furnished modern room as in a traditional one.

The colour

Two colours do the whole job. The ground is taupe, a grey-brown with a slightly pink cast in daylight and a cooler mushroom tone in shade, and it is left plain wherever the vine is not. The pattern is worked in gold at two strengths: a deeper ochre that carries the outlines of the scroll and the key fret, and a lighter straw gold in the silk passages that goes almost white where the light strikes across the pile and drops back to bronze when you walk the other way. Close up (images 8 and 11) the two golds sit side by side within a single motif, so the vine looks shaded rather than flat.

The making

Hand-knotted, with a wool pile carrying a touch of silk reserved for the pattern, so the field stays matte and the drawing has the sheen. The back, visible at the folded corner in image 10, shows the design coming through clearly. The table records the rug as recent and in excellent condition, and at this length it is one of the larger pieces in our hand-knotted stock, the sort of carpet that covers an open plan living room end to end.