6'1" x 18'4" Gallery Runner Rug | Green Mahal Design | Hand-Knotted Wool, Made in India, Brand New

This is a true gallery length piece: 18'4" long and 6'1" wide, hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation and drawn in the Mahal manner, with a soft green field carrying an all-over palmette and vine pattern from one end to the other. Sizes like this almost never come up in a hallway or gallery, which is why it was listed as an odd size, and it is exactly the shape that solves a long corridor, a wide stair landing or the run between two rooms that a standard 2'6" runner leaves looking thin. The wool is clipped at a 3/8" pile, dense enough to take traffic and still show the drawing cleanly. As a hand-knotted Oriental rug, it ships with a certificate of authenticity, and it has never been used or walked on.

Design and Motifs

The field is a classic Mahal composition, an all over pattern with no central medallion, so the eye travels the full length of the rug instead of stopping in the middle. Ivory vines loop into wide ogee arches, and inside each one sits a large serrated palmette: aubergine at the top, then peach and camel, then a shield shaped gold rosette with a raspberry outline. Small stepped grey rosettes fill the side spaces, and a vertical column of 4 pink lozenge medallions with tiny cross centers runs through the middle of the field, flanked by narrow bar cartouches. Detached leaf sprigs, curled tendrils and tiny bird-like buds scatter across the ground, the loose village drawing that gives Mahal work its charm. The wide main border carries alternating cream palmettes and green lotus flowers on a wine ground, framed by a checkered minor guard in green, rust and ivory. The end borders repeat the same fan-shaped palmette across the width, and the 4 corners are resolved by hand rather than mechanically mirrored, so each one reads slightly differently.

A Green Field Against a Wine Red Border

Green grounds are uncommon, and this one is the reason to buy the rug. The field is a muted emerald that shifts toward sage and olive as it moves with the nap, deep and slightly smoky rather than bright, with faint abrash banding across the width that proves the wool was dyed in small lots. Against it the border reads as a saturated raspberry wine, warm enough to look burgundy in lamplight and more crimson in daylight. Between those two poles the palette works in ivory and cream for the vinework, a soft camel gold for the shield rosettes, peach and apricot on the larger palmettes, dark aubergine that reads almost black in the big serrated flowers, and a dusty charcoal grey that outlines the smaller rosettes and keeps the whole thing from turning sweet. If you are decorating around green rugs, this one pairs naturally with walnut and dark oak floors, brass, cream plaster walls and oxblood leather.

Made in India: Mahal Weaving at Gallery Scale

India is where most of the world's good contemporary hand-knotted work is now made, and this rug shows why. The back photograph tells the story: even knot rows, a firm cotton warp and weft, straight selvages and clean color changes with no glue, no tufting and no backing cloth. Every knot is tied by hand, and a loom has to be set and dressed for the full 18'4" before the first row goes down, which is why oversize hand-knotted rugs in this length are produced in such small numbers. The weavers kept the border width and the pattern repeat consistent over that entire run, a discipline that is far harder on a long narrow loom than on a room-size one. Handspun wool at a 3/8" clip gives the pile weight underfoot and a quiet sheen, and the piece lies flat and square end to end, ready to go straight down where you need it.