4' x 6' Silk Prayer Rug | Turquoise Mihrab with Flowering Tree & Birds | Brand New, Never Used

This is a hand-knotted silk prayer rug, 4' x 6', woven entirely in silk over a cotton foundation and still in perfect, never used condition with its original weaver's tag attached to the back. The whole piece is built around a single idea: a lobed mihrab arch filled with a flowering tree, small birds resting in the branches, and a quiet ivory border that lets the turquoise field do the talking. Silk pile at this scale is a display object as much as a floor covering, and the pile catches light differently from each end, so the field reads deep teal from one side and bright aqua from the other. As a hand-knotted Oriental rug it ships with a certificate of authenticity, and it sits in the most usable of the small formats, which you can compare against our other 4x6 rugs.

Design and Motifs

The drawing is a classic prayer composition. A pointed, cusped arch rises from the lower third of the field and crowns at the top, outlined in a thin black line that keeps the shape crisp against the turquoise ground. Inside the arch a slender pale trunk climbs the full length of the rug, splitting into fine vines that carry hundreds of small 5 petal blossoms, each with a dark or gold center and a pair of sage green leaves. At the base the trunk opens into a spray of long serrated leaves drawn in black and blush, a detail you can see clearly in the close-up photographs. Birds are scattered through the branches, 8 of them in total, some perched in profile with long tails, two larger ones near the top of the arch facing each other. Outside the arch the spandrel area shifts to an ivory ground with curling arabesque vine, which then carries into the wide main border of scrolling pink vinework set with yellow sunburst palmettes and small shield shaped blue rosettes. Narrow black guard bands and a barber pole stripe frame the border on both sides and finish the rug at the fringe.

The Turquoise, Cream and Blush Palette

Turquoise dominates, and in silk it is not a flat color. The field moves between a saturated teal where the nap lies away from you and a soft powder aqua where it lies toward you, which is why the overall photograph and the detail shots look like slightly different blues. Against that ground the blossoms are blush pink and cream, almost pearl white at the petal edges, with pinpoint centers in black or mustard gold that give the field its sparkle. The leaves and vines are a muted sage and olive green, deliberately quiet so the flowers stay forward. The border is cream to ivory, warmed by salmon and dusty rose vinework, with accents of pale sky blue, soft green and yellow inside the palmettes. Soft black appears only where it is needed: the guard bands, the outline of the arch, the serrated leaf tips at the base of the tree. The fringe and ends are natural ivory. It is a cool, pastel palette overall, light enough for a bedroom or a study and distinctive enough to hang as a panel on the wall.

Made in China: Weaving and Quality

China has woven fine silk pile rugs for the export market for generations, and the better workshops specialize in exactly this kind of small, densely knotted silk piece, where the whole point is drawing you cannot achieve in wool. A blossom the size of a fingernail with a separate center and two leaves, a vine one knot wide, a bird with a defined eye and tail: all of that needs a very high knot count, and the back of this rug shows the tight, even grain that comes with it. The silk is reeled and lustrous rather than fibrous, so the pile has that liquid shine and the color shift you see across the photographs. Selvedges are wrapped in turquoise and the ends are finished with hand-tied ivory fringe, with the original hand-knotted Oriental rug tag still on the reverse. Being new and never used, the pile stands at full height, the colors are at their strongest, and the rug has decades of life ahead of it on the floor or on the wall.