7'11" x 9'10" Serapi Rug | Geometric Star Medallion | Sage Green & Brick Red Wool | Made in India

What carries this 7'11" x 9'10" Serapi is proportion. One commanding star medallion sits in a quiet sage green field, the ivory corners are left open enough to breathe, and the red main border is wide enough to frame the whole composition without crowding it. The pile is a practical 3/8" wool tied knot by knot over a cotton foundation, short and dense enough to sit under dining chairs or a coffee table and still show every outline cleanly. Condition is excellent, with full even pile and clean ivory fringe at both ends, and the rug ships with a certificate of authenticity. It also lands in the most useful footprint on the floor, which is why we keep it grouped with our other 8x10 hand-knotted rugs.

Design and Motifs

The drawing is pure Serapi: everything is built from straight lines, stepped edges and angular leaf forms rather than curves. A brick red 8 lobed star medallion holds the center of the field, and inside it a deep navy rosette medallion radiates light blue cloud bands and serrated leaves out to each of the 8 points. Four light blue floral cartouches balance the medallion at the diagonals, each one filled with a cluster of stylized blossoms. The medallion sits inside a stepped hexagonal field reserve, with slender ivory and red pendants rising from the top and bottom ends toward the ivory spandrels. Those 4 corner panels are the quietest part of the rug: ivory grounds carrying scrolling green palmette figures, small blossom sprays and tiny rosettes. The red main border alternates angular palmettes with ivory rosette discs, flanked by blue guard stripes of running vine and a narrow ivory outer stripe, which is the classic framing formula on geometric medallion rugs.

A Closer Look at the Colors

The spec sheet names red and ivory as the lead colors, and they are the ones you read from across a room, but the field is what makes this piece unusual. It is a soft sage green with an olive and taupe cast, almost a mushroom tone in raking light, and it pushes the brick red medallion forward instead of competing with it. That red is a true tomato brick rather than a deep burgundy, repeated in the main border so the eye travels between the center and the frame. The medallion core runs deep indigo navy, with a small rosette at the very center ringed in aqua, gold and salmon. Three separate tones of blue appear through the design, from a dusty cornflower in the cartouches to a steel blue in the guard stripes to the near black navy of the inner medallion. Ivory and cream hold the spandrels and the outer stripe, and the smallest accents are the ones worth finding up close: dark bottle green leaf tips, pale salmon pink buds and the occasional ice blue flower head scattered through the field.

Woven in India in the Serapi Tradition

This rug was made in India, which is where most of the world's good contemporary hand-knotted weaving now happens, and it is honest work: wool pile knotted row by row onto a cotton foundation, with the warp ends finished as fringe rather than machine bound. The back photograph tells you most of what you need to know about quality. The knot rows are straight and tightly packed, the design outlines stay crisp from one side of the field to the other, and the selvedges are tidy, which means the rug lies flat and will hold its shape under furniture for decades. Serapi refers to the design vocabulary, the bold village medallion with stepped corners and angular leaves, and the Indian weavers who specialize in it have had generations to refine the layout and the wool. If you are still sorting out how this type of piece relates to the wider category, our guide on what makes an Oriental rug different is the place to start.