3' x 4' Chinese Last Supper Rug | Silk | Multi-Colour

A pictorial silk rug of 3' x 4', hand-knotted in China, showing the Last Supper set inside an arched hall. The scene fills almost the whole field and is held in a black border carrying kneeling angels at the two upper corners and four figural roundels at the centres of the sides. At arm's length it reads as a framed painting; the silk pile changes tone as the rug is turned, so the tablecloth and the sky shift between pale blue and near white depending on where you stand.

Design

Thirteen figures sit and lean along a long table covered in a pale blue cloth, with bowls, a green-rimmed dish, a red glass and a small blue goblet set out in front of them. Behind them runs a panelled wall in dusty rose with a lattice pattern, then a balustrade, then three pointed arches opening onto landscape: hills and a road on the left, a rocky gorge in the centre, a walled town with towers, a bridge and a river on the right. The floor is laid in red and cream tiles, with a footed ewer and a shallow basin at the right edge. The rectangular frame around all this is a black ground covered in scrolling gold and olive leafwork; the upper corners hold two large kneeling angels, and medallions at top, bottom and sides carry the Madonna, a haloed angel with a lily, an infant lying in straw and the baptism in the river. An ivory outer guard stripe with small red vine sprigs and a woven cartouche closes the design.

Colour

The border ground is true black, and the scrollwork over it runs from pale straw through olive to a dull antique gold, with burgundy outlines separating one scroll from the next. Inside the arch the palette turns light: chalky rose on the wall panels, ivory and celadon on the table, sky blue in the three landscape openings. The robes give the field its weight, madder red and brick on several figures, moss green and a greyed teal on others, and these carry the eye along the table against the paler architecture behind. The multi-colour range is wide but kept quiet, with no single hue dominating outside the black frame.

Making

The rug is hand-knotted with a silk pile, fine enough that individual faces, fingers and the roof tiles of a distant tower are each drawn in only a few knots across. Silk gives both the sheen that makes the tablecloth look lit and the resolution the design needs. It was woven in China, is listed as new and in perfect condition, with full ivory fringes at both ends. At this size it is as often hung as laid, and it sits comfortably among the small pictorial pieces in our full collection.