5'7" x 7'6" Chinese Pictorial Tapestry Rug | Wool and Silk | Multicolour

A 5'7" x 7'6" pictorial panel woven in China in wool and silk, worked flat with no pile so the drawing stays sharp. The scene is a wooded clearing with three standing figures and winged putti, held inside a wide rose pink border, and the piece reads as a wall panel as readily as a floor covering. Among the rugs we carry it is one of the few that is built around a picture rather than a pattern.

The design

Two men come in from the left, one in a blue tunic with a sheaf of spears over his shoulder, the other in a rose red cloak over a gold pleated skirt, both in laced sandals. A woman in cream and wine drapery stands at the right against a dark tree trunk, a bow in her lowered hand and her other arm extended towards them. A small cupid sits at her feet, and two more winged children are set among the leaves above, one perched on a branch with a bow and one in flight through pale foliage. Open sky and a low pale horizon fill the left of the field; dense green woodland closes the right. The frame is an acanthus and palmette repeat on a cream ground, finished with a narrow yellow guard inside and a plain olive edge outside, the whole panel rectangular and squared at the corners.

The colour

The range of colour is broad but kept low in key. Rose pink and madder carry the border and the cloaks, running from a clear blush through to a deep wine in the shadowed folds. Against them the sky is cream shading to pale apricot and a thin cold blue, and the woodland on the right is a dark sap green with teal in the deepest passages and olive and straw in the lit leaves. Flesh tones are the lightest notes in the field, pale ivory and peach, and the silk in them catches the light at a different angle from the wool around it, which is what gives the figures their lift off the ground.

The making

The panel is flat woven in wool and silk, with the colour built in fine hatched bands that let one tone pass into the next across the sky and the drapery. Slits between colour areas are visible in the darker greens where the wefts meet, and the back carries the loose ends shown in the last photograph. It was woven in China and the table records it as recent, with the condition given as perfect.