7'9" x 9'7" Needlepoint Flat Weave Rug | French Aubusson Floral & Birds | Ivory & Olive Green | Perfect Condition

This 7'9" x 9'7" needlepoint flat weave rug is a handmade piece in the French Aubusson manner, stitched in wool on a cotton canvas ground so the surface sits flat and almost tapestry-like underfoot. There is no pile height to crush, which is why a needlepoint of this type reads as crisp and graphic in a room and slides easily under a dining chair or a low sofa. The drawing is a garden: ivory open ground scattered with flowering vines, tall spiky palmette leaves, and small birds in flight, all contained by a deep olive green border of overlapping foliage. Condition is perfect, with no wear, no repairs and clean, straight edges, and the piece ships with our certificate of authenticity confirming it as a genuine handmade Oriental rug. At this size it sits squarely in the most useful footprint we sell, the 8x10 Persian and Oriental rugs range.

Design and Motifs

The field is a true all over floral design with no medallion, built from thin arching stems that climb from the lower border toward the center and break into 5 petal blossoms, small buds and clusters of trumpet-shaped lilies. Tall fan-shaped palmette leaves anchor the four quarters of the field, drawn with enough shading in the needlepoint stitches to give each frond a lit side and a shadowed side. Birds are the detail that makes this piece: at least 8 of them are worked into the field and inner border, wings spread, some with long tail feathers, one shown close in the detail photograph with a blue throat and rust breast. The border is wide and unusual, built from heavy overlapping leaves and blossom groups rather than a ruled guard stripe, so the garden appears to grow inward from the edge. Corners are not mirrored perfectly, which is the honest signature of hand work rather than print.

Ivory Field and Olive Green Border Colors

The ground is a warm white, closer to clotted cream than to bright chalk white, and because it is left mostly open it reflects light and keeps the whole piece feeling airy. Against it the foliage runs through a full range of greens: dark olive and bronze-green in the border, mid moss green in the palmette leaves, and a pale sage used for the highlighted edges of individual fronds, the kind of layering that makes green area rugs work in a room full of wood tones. Flower heads carry the accent colors, rust and brick red in the small rosettes, soft apricot and antique gold in the lilies, a dusty pink on a few blossoms along the border, and tiny touches of slate blue that reappear on the birds' wings and throats. The outer edge finishes in a muted ochre and brown that frames the olive, and on the back the yarns read slightly brighter than on the face, a good sign that the colors have stayed fresh.

French Design, Made in China: Needlepoint Weaving Quality

Needlepoint rugs of this kind take their pattern vocabulary from the French workshops of Aubusson and Savonnerie, where flowering vines, foliate borders and songbirds were the stock of 18th and 19th century floor coverings, and that European drawing is why the piece sits comfortably in a traditional or country-style interior. The work itself was done in China, which for several decades has been the center of fine needlepoint production, with workshops carrying the technique at a level of stitch density most other places no longer attempt. The back photograph shows exactly how it is built: an even cotton canvas grid, each square filled by hand with wool, and a cotton binding tape stitched along the edge to protect the selvage. That flat construction makes the rug light for its 7'9" x 9'7" footprint, easy to roll and move, and simple to keep clean, while the tight wool stitching holds the fine detail of the birds and blossoms without blurring.