4' x 6' Chinese Silk Oriental Rug | Turquoise and Black Esfahan Column Design | New, Signed Cartouche

Pure silk pile, a midnight black ground and five vertical turquoise columns running the length of the field: this is a small rug that behaves like a painting. The pile is short and tightly clipped so every stem and blossom reads cleanly, and the silk shifts from bright aqua to deep teal as you walk around it, which is exactly why the photographs of the same field look like different blues. At 4' x 6' it sits comfortably among our 4x6 rugs, a scale that works beside a bed, under a small table or mounted flat on a wall. It has never been used, the ends and sides are original and intact, and it ships with our certificate of authenticity confirming it is genuinely hand-knotted.

Design and Motifs

The field is built on the Esfahan formula of a central medallion floating over dense arabesque, reworked into a column panel layout. Broad turquoise bands rise vertically through the field, each one filled with a tone-on-tone floral trellis drawn in a slightly darker blue so the pattern only appears when the light catches it. Between them, black panels carry ivory vine scroll, palmettes and small pink and red blossoms worked at a very fine scale. A 16 point star medallion sits at the center, black ground with an ivory arabesque lattice and a pale green rosette at the core, answered by two smaller pendant cartouches above and below on the long axis. The border system runs five bands deep: a black main border of linked palmettes and cloud arabesques, aqua guard stripes of alternating rosettes and leaves, narrow ivory and navy minor stripes, and an ivory end panel carrying the woven signature cartouche visible in the close-up photographs.

A Turquoise and Black Color Story

Turquoise is the lead color and it is used in two strengths: a clear swimming pool blue in the wide field columns, and a softer, greyer aqua in the guard borders where it cools the whole frame down. Against that sits a true blue black, dark enough at a distance to read as ink, which is what makes the turquoise look lit from behind. The drawing on the black is done in warm ivory and cream with olive and sage green leafage, and the flowers are picked out in soft pink and lilac with small hits of orange and a scattering of tomato red dots that keep the palette from going cold. The outer navy stripe and the pale greenish ivory fringe close the rug quietly. In a room with warm wood or brass this reads jewel-like; against grey or white walls the turquoise becomes the only color you notice.

Silk Weaving Quality and Origin

This piece was hand-knotted in China, where the best contemporary silk workshops weave to classical drawings at knot counts fine enough to hold a curved line without breaking it into steps. That precision is the whole point of an Esfahan style cartoon: the vine has to flow, the medallion points have to stay symmetrical, and the half millimeter blossoms in the guard stripes have to keep their shape. You can see the result in the corner and fold photographs, where the back shows a dense, even, small knot and the pile is clipped low so the silk reflects rather than fluffs. Buyers researching how this tradition relates to the wider category can read our guide to what actually separates a Persian from an Oriental rug. Handle it as the fine silk piece it is: low traffic placement, a pad underneath, and rotation once a year to keep the sheen even.