8'1" x 8'3" Round Wool and Silk Oriental Rug | Dom Esfahan Dome Medallion | New, Never Used

A round rug this size is a commitment, and this one earns it. Measuring 8'1" x 8'3", it is a hand-knotted Oriental rug worked in wool with silk highlights over a cotton foundation, and the drawing is the Dom Esfahan pattern, the design that mirrors the painted underside of a domed ceiling. Everything radiates from a single point at the center, which is exactly how a round rug should be composed and exactly why so few round rugs manage it. The pile is clipped low enough to hold the outlines crisp, the silk catches light along the ribs of the star, and the rug is new and never used, with no wear anywhere on the pile or the ivory fringe. It ships with a certificate of authenticity recording the size, materials, construction and origin.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a small star medallion filled with a dense ivory and pale blue arabesque, ringed by tiny palmettes and a single dark rosette at the pivot. From that star, long lancet panels fan outward like the ribs of a cupola, alternating between near-black grounds packed with curling vine and slate blue grounds carrying boteh and leaf forms. Narrow ivory ribs outlined in dark brown separate every panel, and each rib is beaded with a row of small pearls that reads as architectural molding rather than floral filler. Between the panel tips sit diamond and kite shaped cartouches, each one holding a miniature flower head. The surrounding border is treated as a ring of framed compartments instead of a continuous vine: stepped burgundy and rust medallions alternate with camel panels of scrolling arabesque, each compartment separated by its own slender divider and then fenced in by blue and rust guard stripes. A black outer edge closes the circle cleanly, and the ivory fringe is braided and knotted all the way around, which on a round rug is finishing work in its own right.

A Multi-Color Palette Anchored in Rust, Black and Slate Blue

The palette is genuinely multi-color, but it is built on three anchors. Rust red and deeper burgundy carry the border compartments and the stepped medallions inside them. Near-black, with a faint green cast where the wool shifts, fills the alternating dome panels and gives the whole composition its depth. Slate blue, a dusty grayish tone rather than a bright navy, runs through the other panels, the guard stripes and the small flower heads, and in the close-up images it reads cooler and almost powder blue. Around those anchors sit camel gold in the border grounds, soft salmon pink in the scrollwork and leaves, and ivory to cream in the central star, the panel ribs and the pearled outlines. There are flashes of olive and a dark indigo in the smallest flowers, which is where the silk highlights tend to sit and where the light moves as you walk around the rug. Because the ivory and camel tones carry most of the drawing, the rug stays bright overall rather than reading as a dark rug, and it sits comfortably on pale oak flooring as shown in the photographs.

Origin and Weaving Quality: Made in China

This rug was made in China, where a number of workshops specialize in classical city designs woven to high knot counts in wool with silk accents, and the Dom Esfahan dome pattern is one of the hardest of those designs to execute. The reason is geometry: the panels have to divide the circle evenly, every rib has to meet the center at the same angle, and any error in the row count shows immediately as a crooked spoke. Here the panels close correctly and the border compartments land evenly around the full circumference, which tells you the loom was set up properly and the weavers followed a careful cartoon rather than improvising. The weave is tight and even on the back, the pile is short, and the black selvage is wrapped firmly around the whole circle. If you are weighing the difference between a Chinese piece like this and city workshop weaving elsewhere, our guide on what separates a Persian rug from a broader Oriental rug explains how origin, design and knot structure actually relate to each other.