4'4" x 5'10" Chinese Tapestry Rug | Aubusson-Style Floral Urn, Parrot & Dog Scenery | Flat Tapestry Weave, New

This is a picture first and a floor covering second. Woven entirely by hand in the flat tapestry technique with no pile at all, the 4'4" x 5'10" panel reads like an 18th century French still life painting translated into wool, and it hangs as beautifully as it lies. The surface is smooth and paper thin, the drawing is shaded stitch by stitch rather than outlined, and the black selvage that frames the outer edge gives the whole piece the finish of a mounted canvas. It is new, never used and in perfect condition, and it ships with a certificate of authenticity. Anyone weighing a decorative Oriental rug against wall art can have both here, and the compact 4 x 6 size fits above a console, over a mantel or in a small study without dominating the room.

Design and Motifs

The scene is built around a tall footed urn spilling an enormous bouquet: tulips, full blown roses, peonies, a single sunflower and sprays of small blue blossoms, all rising into the feathery branches of a tree that fills the upper field. To the left a scarlet macaw with green and blue wing feathers perches on a second carved urn wrapped in vine leaves. To the right a long haired dog in a studded collar lunges forward out of the shadow, mouth open, one paw raised. Between them the ground is heaped with fruit: a halved melon, clusters of grapes, quinces, a woven basket and scattered apples rolling toward the lower edge. A lake and a bank of reeds open the middle distance, with hills and a pale sky behind. The whole picture sits inside a wide border of acanthus scrollwork and shell cartouches, then a fine sawtooth guard stripe, then the plain black outer frame.

A Multi Color Palette Built on Gold, Sage and Scarlet

The dominant tone is a warm antique gold that runs from the border scrollwork through the foreground earth and the distant hills, keeping the whole panel soft and lamplit rather than bright. Against it the weaver worked cool contrast: sage and olive green in the urn body and the reeds, a band of sky blue and turquoise across the water and the upper sky, and deep bottle green in the parrot's wing. The flowers carry the warm notes, coral and salmon in the roses, clean ivory and cream in the tulips, and a true scarlet in the macaw's head and breast that is the single loudest color on the piece. Fruit is painted in pale celadon, butter yellow and dusty rose, the dog is cinnamon brown over cream, and the brown and chocolate shading in the foreground grounds everything. The black outer band sharpens the entire multi color palette and makes the golds look richer than they are on their own.

Woven in China in the Aubusson Tradition

Tapestry panels of this kind descend from the French workshops that supplied chateau walls with verdure and still life hangings, and the format has been carried on by Chinese hand weaving ateliers that took up the technique and now produce much of the best work of this type. There is no knotted pile: the weaver passes colored weft by hand across a cotton warp and builds the image directly in the cloth, which is why the shading in the melon flesh and the dog's coat looks brushed rather than pixelated, and why the reverse shows the loose color ends visible in the final photograph. That flat construction also keeps the panel light enough to hang from a rod or batten, while remaining sturdy enough to use underfoot in a low traffic spot. It is a genuinely skilled piece of hand weaving and a finished picture at the same time.