5'9" x 8'9" Chinese Traditional Rug | Wool and Silk | Black and Ivory

This rug measures 5'9" x 8'9" and was hand-knotted in China with a pile of wool and silk. The field is a flat, unbroken black carried from end to end by thin brown vines and open flower heads, and it sits inside a wide ivory border that lifts the whole thing by contrast. Seen from above, as in the first photograph, the drawing is fine enough that the individual petals hold their outlines at a distance.

The design

The traditional layout is an allover one with no medallion. Down the centre of the field runs a column of four large fan-shaped palmettes, each one mirrored left and right so that the pairs read as facing each other, and between and around them the vines carry smaller rosettes, carnations and serrated leaves. At the top and bottom of the field a symmetrical vase motif sits on the centre line, flanked by short sprays of small red and cream blossoms, visible clearly in the close photograph of the lower end. The main border repeats an alternating sequence of lotus palmettes and round rosette bouquets on ivory, and it is held on both sides by a narrow sage minor border of small paired leaves and by thin black outer stripes.

The colour

The ground is a dense black with no variation across the field, which is what makes the floral work read as clearly as it does. Against it the flowers are worked in cream, soft peach, pale rose and a quiet lilac, with leaves and calyxes in a grey-green sage that turns more olive where the pile falls away from the light. Burgundy appears in small amounts, in the hearts of the border rosettes and the outlines of the larger palmettes, and the vines themselves are a warm brown. The border ivory carries a faint peach cast, closer to the colour of unbleached wool than to white, and the ivory fringe at both ends matches it.

The making

The rug is hand-knotted, rectangular, and the pile is wool with silk used in the highlights, where it takes the light differently and gives the flower heads a sheen against the matt black wool, most obvious along the rolled edge in the ninth and tenth photographs. The ends finish in plain cotton fringe. Both the age and the condition are recorded as new.