16'6" x 18' Oriental Mahal Design Rug | Navy and Gold All Over Floral | Hand-Knotted in India

At 16'6" x 18' this is a genuine palace piece, almost square in proportion and large enough to carry a great room, a double-height living room or a long formal dining table with all of its chairs pulled out. It is hand-knotted in India on a cotton foundation with a wool pile that photographs with real sheen, and it follows the classic Mahal design: a densely drawn all over floral field enclosed by a five band border system. Very few oversize rugs come this wide, and fewer still hold their drawing this evenly across 18 feet of length. The condition is excellent, the pile stands full and even edge to edge, and the rug ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming that it is hand-knotted.

Design and Motifs

There is no central medallion here. The field is a true all over design, built from a lattice of thin curling vines that link large open rosettes, lobed palmettes and small serrated leaves in mirrored repeats running the full length of the rug. Look closely at the field photographs and you can count several distinct flower heads: broad 8 petal rosettes with dark centers, teardrop palmettes filled with burgundy and slate blue, small stepped star forms and tiny 4 petal buds scattered into the gaps so that almost no ground is left empty. The border system is the other half of the design. A wide ivory gold main band carries a wandering vine punctuated by burgundy cartouches and dark serrated leaves, flanked on both sides by burgundy bands of alternating palmettes and flower sprays, then finished with narrow slate blue guard stripes and a plain wine red outer edge. Corners are resolved cleanly on all 4 sides, which on a rug this wide is a drafting achievement rather than an accident.

A Midnight Navy Field Lit With Saffron Gold

The ground is a deep midnight navy that reads nearly black in low light and opens into a clear inky blue where the light falls across the pile. Against it the floral work is worked in a whole range of golds: bright saffron and marigold on the largest rosettes, softer honey and wheat tones on the secondary blooms, and pale cream on the smallest buds, so the field has depth instead of a single flat yellow. Burgundy and oxblood appear as flower centers and small leaf tips, olive and sage green run through the vine work, and a cool slate blue turns up inside the palmettes to keep the warm tones from taking over. The borders reverse the balance completely: wine red and pale gold dominate, with the light blue guard stripes acting as a bright line between them. Because the wool has a natural luster, the golds shift in tone as you walk around the rug, which is why the overhead shot and the angled shots look like two different color stories of the same piece.

Weaving Quality and Origin

This rug was hand-knotted in India, which is where most of the world's best contemporary hand-knotted floor work is now produced, and the quality on this piece backs that up. The reverse, visible in the folded corner photographs, shows an even cotton foundation with the pattern reading crisply through to the back, the sign of a tight knot count and consistent tension across an 18 foot loom. Weaving an Oriental rug at this width takes a team of weavers working side by side for a long stretch of time, and any drift in beat-down or dye lot would show immediately across a field this open. There is none of that here: the navy stays constant, the borders track straight, and the pile depth is uniform from fringe to fringe. Handled and inspected in Freeport before listing, it is a floor-ready piece in excellent condition.