7'11" x 8'6" Square Chinese Art Deco Rug | Carved Beige Field with Floral Sprays | New & Signed AL-B

This is a genuinely square piece, 7'11" x 8'6", hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation and never put on a floor. The whole surface is worked in carved relief, so the beige and peach ground is not flat: every outline in the lattice, every leaf and every band of the border has been hand-carved into the 1/2" pile, which is what gives the rug that shadowed, almost embossed look in the photographs. Five pink peony sprays float on the field, a crisp black band frames the outside, and the lilac letters "AL-B" sit in the lower border as a woven monogram. If you are weighing up what separates this kind of Oriental rug from other hand-knotted traditions, the carving and the dense, lustrous wool are the tells. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The inner field is filled edge to edge with a carved lattice of 4 petal blossoms set inside small squares, a quiet, architectural repeat that reads as texture rather than pattern from standing height. Over it sit 5 naturalistic peony and camellia sprays, 1 at the center and 4 placed toward the corners, each with its own curling branch, open bloom, tight bud and a fan of pointed leaves. The drawing is the Art Deco signature: botanical realism dropped onto a strict geometric ground, with nothing filling the space in between. Around the field runs a narrow lilac stripe, an ivory guard, then a flat key-fret meander, and finally a wide outer band of large interlocking fret hooks that turn cleanly at all 4 corners. A plain black band closes the design before the ivory cotton fringe. The sculpted outlines are cut by hand after knotting, which is why the 1/2" pile sits at two different heights and catches the light differently depending on where you stand.

A Carved Palette of Beige, Peach and Blush Pink

The ground is a warm beige that photographs closer to peach and apricot under strong light, with the carved lattice showing a shade or two deeper than the surface around it, so the field shifts between soft camel and pale salmon across the square. The fret borders pick up a slightly sandier tan, separated by a thin band of dusty lilac and a cream guard stripe that keeps the whole thing from going monochrome. The flowers are the only saturated notes: raspberry and blush pink petals with pale cream hearts, leaves in sage green, olive and a cool blue-gray, and lilac-pink stems that tie back to the border stripe. The monogram letters are woven in the same muted lilac. Holding it all together is the black outer band, which is what gives this piece its graphic Deco snap and makes it read as a deliberate design choice rather than a pale neutral. If you are building a room around soft neutrals, it sits naturally with our beige and ivory rugs.

Woven in China: Art Deco Drawing and Carved Wool Weaving

Made in China, in the workshop tradition that produced the great Art Deco floor pieces of the 1920s and 1930s: open fields, naturalistic flowers, fret borders borrowed from classical Chinese ornament, and a finish technique found almost nowhere else, where the weaver carves a channel along every outline so the design stands in relief. That finishing only works if the wool is good. Here it is heavy, springy and noticeably lustrous, knotted thick enough to hold a clean carved edge and dense enough that the back shows a tight, regular weave on its cotton foundation. The square format is the other thing worth noting, because true squares are difficult to source and this one is an honest 7'11" x 8'6", which suits a square seating group, a games table or a center hall. Collectors looking for this decorative, pattern-forward approach will find it alongside our other modern and contemporary hand-knotted rugs, and it arrives here in perfect, unused condition.