4' x 4' Chinese Herekeh Rug | Silk | Round

A round rug measuring 4' x 4', hand-knotted in China with a pile of silk and drawn in the Herekeh manner: a single radiating medallion filling almost the whole field, ringed by narrow guard bands and one broad dark border of paisleys. The knotting is fine enough that the lance points of the medallion taper to a single line, and the silk carries a shift of light across the surface, so the field reads pale gold from one side and deeper copper from the other.

Design

The centre is a small rosette from which a dense burst of fine rays spreads outward, then opens into a ring of sixteen alternating leaf forms: broad rust-brown botehs holding pale slate palmettes, and slimmer olive leaves filled with curling black vinework. Around the medallion sits a plain ivory ring covered in a thin tracery of scrolling arabesque, then a scalloped edge and a narrow slate-green band of small paisleys and cypress shapes. The main border is a deep indigo ground carrying large ivory and saffron botehs linked head to tail by fine gold outlines, each one turned to follow the circle. Outside that come an ivory band of repeating bracket motifs, an olive-green edge line, and a flatwoven ivory skirt stamped with little four-petal rosettes before the fringe. A small inscribed cartouche is worked into that flatwoven skirt at one edge.

Colour

The dominant contrast is between the near-black indigo of the main border and the ivory field ring, with the medallion sitting between them in rust and burnt orange. Within the leaves the rust deepens to a warm brown and then to black at the outlines, while saffron gold does most of the drawing in the border. Olive and pistachio green run through the guard bands and the alternating medallion leaves, cooled further by a soft slate blue in the palmettes, and small points of burgundy and dusty rose are scattered through the paisleys and the rosettes on the skirt.

Making

Hand-knotted, with a silk pile on a fine foundation, the ends finished as a flatwoven ivory skirt cut into a long plain fringe all the way round the circumference. Cutting a circular rug at this level of detail means redrawing every border repeat to the curve rather than turning a corner, which is why the botehs lean gradually along the band. The rug is new and the condition is listed as perfect, with full pile and clean edges throughout.