3' x 4' Chinese Ten Commandments Rug | Silk | Multi-Colour

A pictorial panel measuring Width: 3' x Length: 4', knotted in China with a silk pile that carries the drawing at a very fine scale. The whole face is one scene rather than a repeating pattern: two lions on plinths at the centre, the tablets of the law above them under a rayed sun, robed figures at either side and panels of Hebrew lettering set into the composition. Most pieces of this kind are made to hang, and the fringe, the flat handle and the unworn pile in the photographs are consistent with a rug that has not been on a floor.

The design

The Ten Commandments design is built as an architecture. Two fluted columns frame a central tablet panel, where kneeling winged figures flank the two stone tables and lamps burn on volute pedestals to either side. Below runs a long inscription panel in black lettering, and beneath that the two lions face outward from tiled plinths while Elijah's chariot, drawn by pale horses with winged attendants, crosses the sky above a walled city with a domed building. A high priest in a striped vestment and jewelled breastplate holds a lit lamp on the left; a bearded figure in a crimson mantle raises a second pair of tablets on the right, a Torah scroll at his feet. An arched band of roundels crosses the upper corners with the emblems of the tribes, a grape cluster, a palm, a deer, a sheaf, a ship, a lion, a serpent, a sword, each labelled in Hebrew, and a crown sits at the top centre. Smaller inset scenes fill the corners: an angel staying a raised hand over an altar, and a figure striking water from a rock while three kneel to drink. The rectangular format holds all of it without crowding.

The colour

The sky ground is a clear turquoise, cooler where the silk lies one way and greener where it lies the other. Against it the architecture and the two lions are saffron and honey gold, and the border ground is a deep madder red carrying cream roundels outlined in rose. Robes give the strongest accents: crimson and rose madder on the two principal figures, a mid blue on the priest's vestment and on the kneeling attendants, with olive green in the rocks and the scroll. Inscription panels are left ivory so the black lettering reads at a distance. It is a multi-colour field in the proper sense, a dozen shades each doing a specific job.

The making

Hand-knotted in China, silk pile throughout, which is what allows the faces, the lions' manes and the individual Hebrew characters to be drawn at this size. The silk gives the surface its two-tone shift: the same gold reads pale from one end and burnished from the other. The table records the rug as new and in perfect condition, and the photographs bear that out, with full pile, straight sides and a clean ivory fringe at both ends. It sits at the small, finely knotted end of hand-knotted work, made to be looked at closely.