4' x 6' Silk Hunting Scene Oriental Rug | Signed Cartouche | Beige Field, Never Used

Hold this one up to a window and it changes twice: from one end the beige field reads pale and pearly, from the other it darkens to warm honey, which is what pure silk pile does and what no photograph fully shows. Inside that field a full hunt is under way, more than a dozen riders with bows, spears and sabres pursuing lions, leopards, deer and rabbits through flowering shrubs. It is a small piece, one of those 4 x 6 silk rugs that works as easily on a wall as on a floor, and the drawing is fine enough to reward looking at from a foot away. A small woven cartouche sits in the outer border at one end, the weaver's mark. The rug is new, never used, and ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming it as a genuine hand-knotted piece.

Design and Motifs

There is no medallion and no repeat here, which is the point: every figure is drawn once and placed on its own. Riders in patterned coats and turbans sit on chestnut, cream and rose-toned horses, one drawing a bow over his shoulder, another driving a long spear down at a fleeing animal, a third turning in the saddle in the classic backward shot. Around them run lions with combed manes, spotted leopards, striped tigers, gazelles, hares and hounds, separated by small flowering plants, blossoming branches and a pair of green palms. The main border switches register completely: a mauve ground carrying tall flowering trees with alternating leaping stags and prowling lions between them, framed on both sides by crimson guard stripes of scrolling palmettes and a narrow checkered minor stripe. The outermost band is an ivory scroll of cloud-band arabesques, and it is here that the signature cartouche is woven in.

A Beige Field Worked in Rose, Crimson and Teal

The field is a soft ivory beige with the natural luster of silk, so the ground itself carries light rather than sitting flat. Against it the palette is deliberately restrained and warm: chestnut, gold and apricot horses, riders in deep teal, burgundy, olive and aubergine, saddle cloths picked out with tiny turquoise and coral dots. Foliage runs through several greens at once, from a dark bottle green in the palms to a yellow-toned olive in the small plants, and blossoms are worked in rose pink and pale peach. The border shifts to a dusty mauve, cooler than the field, with rose and ivory stags and gold lions standing out clearly against it, while the crimson guard stripes give the whole rug its strongest note of color and hold the composition together. The fringe finishes in a silvery pale grey.

Origin and Weaving Quality

This piece was made in China, where the best workshops weave silk on silk at knot counts high enough to carry figural drawing of this kind, and it belongs to the broader family of the hand-knotted Oriental rug. Turn it over and the reason for the detail is obvious: the back is as legible as the front, with individual faces, hooves and blossoms readable knot by knot, which only happens when the weave is very tight and the foundation very fine. A hunting scene is one of the hardest subjects a weaver can take on, because there is no symmetry to fall back on and every animal has to be mapped out separately on the cartoon. The signed cartouche in the end border tells you the weaver was willing to put a name to the result.