6' x 8'8" Chinese Art Deco Rug | Navy Field, Tan Floral Border | Antique Pictorial Roundel Medallion

Most rugs fill the field. This one empties it. The 6' x 8'8" navy ground is left almost entirely bare, and everything the weaver wanted you to look at is pushed to a single roundel in the center and to the four corners, which is exactly the restraint that makes an early Chinese Art Deco piece read as modern a century later. It is hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation, with a low even pile that has aged to a soft matte finish, and the ivory fringe and selvages are intact on all 4 sides. As an Oriental rug in the 6x9 size, it is one of the easiest antiques to place in a real room. Every rug we ship carries our certificate of authenticity confirming the origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The center roundel is a small landscape rather than an ornament: a tiled pagoda roof on a terrace, a spotted deer standing below, a crane in flight with wings open, and a flowering prunus branch curling across the whole disc in soft gold and pale blue blossoms. Each of the 4 corners carries a spandrel of lotus, peony and broad water leaves, and at the base of the 2 lower corners a pair of white cranes rests on the ground with their tail feathers trailing, drawn as a matched mirror pair. The tan main border runs a light, widely spaced vine of blossoming branches broken by tufted grass sprays and a small ladder-like scroll motif, with tiny flower heads scattered between them. Inside the border sit a narrow ivory line, a plain sky blue band and a fine dark outline, and the whole field is enclosed by a plain navy outer band that frames the rug like a mat around a print.

Color

The field is a deep navy that shades toward ink and near-black where the light falls across the pile, the kind of dark blue that comes from a long indigo dip and holds its depth instead of going flat. Against it the main border reads as a warm tan, closer to camel and old gold at the edges, and that single contrast carries the whole rug. Between the two, a clear sky blue guard band cools the transition, outlined by a thin ivory line that keeps the border from bleeding into the field. The drawing itself uses a narrow palette: chalky ivory for the cranes and blossoms, soft gold for the branches and the pagoda, muted teal and slate blue for the leaves, and quiet touches of pale mushroom and faded apricot in the corner flowers. The result is a rug that behaves like a large block of navy blue in a room, with the color detail concentrated where you actually look.

Origin and Weave

This is Chinese work in the Peking tradition, the workshop style that produced the open-field pictorial rugs exported west through the 1920s and 1930s and known in the trade ever since as Chinese Art Deco. The weave is a single-weft wool pile on a cotton foundation, knotted at a moderate count with the pile clipped low and the outlines of the cranes and blossoms carved slightly so the motifs sit crisp against the dark ground, a finishing technique particular to Chinese looms. The back shows clean, regular rows and straight side cords, the mark of a workshop piece rather than a village one, and the wool has kept a dry, soft handle with a low sheen. If you want to place a piece like this in its period, our guide on how to date an Oriental rug walks through the same details we read here.