6'2" x 7'5" Chinese Pictorial Tapestry Rug | Romantic Swing Scene, Cherub Border | Flat-Woven Wall Hanging

Woven entirely by hand, this 6'2" x 7'5" pictorial tapestry tells a romantic story borrowed from the 18th century French Aubusson workshops: a young couple share a rope swing under a spreading tree while a ruined classical colonnade stands on the far hillside. There is no pile here at all. The picture is built stitch by stitch in a flat tapestry weave, which is why the faces, the folds of the drapery and the banked clouds read with the softness of a painting rather than the coarser grain of a knotted piece. At 6 by 7 feet it is equally at home laid in a quiet study or hung on a wall, where the scene sits at eye level and the drawing can be read properly. As a hand-woven Oriental rug it ships with our certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The centre panel is a full landscape rather than a repeating pattern. The woman in a pale blue gown and the man in rose red lean together on a swing hung from a leafy bough at the right, their legs kicked out over a rocky bank. Behind them the ground falls away through low hills to a broken temple with 4 standing columns, a cypress at the left edge, and a sky full of cumulus. The foreground is planted with bearded irises in gold, cream and burgundy, water lilies on a still pool, and broad sword-shaped leaves. The border is pure Aubusson theatre: a painted architectural frame carrying fruit garlands, acanthus scrolls and rose sprays, with winged cherubs perched at each of the 4 corners and at the centre of the top and bottom, flanking small woven cartouches that hold miniature landscapes of their own. A plain sage green outer band finishes the edge and separates the whole composition from the floor or the wall.

A Palette Built on Sage Green, Rose and Ivory

The colouring is deliberately faded in the antique manner, closer to watercolour than to the saturated tones of a village weaving. Sage green frames everything, deepening into olive and teal in the tree canopy and the iris leaves. The sky moves from a pale duck egg blue at the top through cream and ivory in the clouds, and the distant mountain is a dusty violet grey. Warmth comes from the figures and the border: rose red drapery, a gold sash on the swing ropes, terracotta and blush in the garlands, and soft apricot in the scrollwork. The foreground hills carry mauve, sand and pale rust, while burgundy appears only in small doses, in the iris petals and in the thin guard stripe inside the frame. Nothing shouts. The whole palette is built for rooms with cream, stone, oatmeal and natural wood, and the multi-coloured ground keeps it flexible as furnishings change.

Hand-Woven in China in the Aubusson Tradition

China is now one of the few places still producing tapestry work of this ambition by hand, and the weavers there have taken on the French Aubusson repertoire with real discipline. A tapestry like this is not knotted; each colour is woven in as a discrete area of weft across a cotton warp, so the weaver is effectively drawing with thread and cannot hide a mistake under pile. You can judge the standard in the close-ups: the shading on the woman's gown moves through 4 or 5 tones of blue, the cherubs have modelled cheeks and fingers, and the cloud edges stay soft instead of stepping. The back is as clean as the front. Like the best hand-woven Oriental rugs, it is finished with a firm selvedge on all 4 sides, and in perfect, never used condition it is ready either for the floor or for a hanging rod.