8'10" x 11'9" Serapi Rug | Ivory & Rust Geometric Medallion | New, Never Used

This is a brand new, never used hand-knotted Serapi in one of the most useful room sizes there is, close enough to a standard 9x12 area rug to sit under a full seating group or a 10 seat dining table without crowding the walls. The pile is 100% wool at a solid 3/8", tied on a cotton foundation, and the weave is even and tight enough across all 8'10" x 11'9" that the rug lies dead flat straight out of the roll. It is a traditional Oriental rug in the truest sense: drawn by hand, knotted by hand, finished by hand. Every rug we ship travels with a certificate of authenticity confirming the size, materials, origin and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The drawing is classic Serapi: everything angular, nothing curved, every line resolved in straight steps rather than flowing vine. At the center sits a 16 point rust star medallion built around a navy core, and inside that navy core a gold rimmed rosette with 12 petals, flanked by pale blue palmettes and small hooked cartouches filled with knot work. Four anchor pendants push out top and bottom, and the ivory open field around the medallion is left deliberately quiet, scattered with small vinery, serrated leaves, and stylized bird and animal forms tucked into the corner spandrels. The wide rust main border runs a turtle palmette and rosette chain linked by angular vine, framed on both sides by light blue guard stripes carrying a running flower head. This is the kind of bold, large scale geometric medallion rug that reads cleanly from across a room and still rewards a close look at the corners.

The Color Palette

The field is a warm ivory, closer to unbleached cream than white, which keeps the whole rug from feeling heavy. Around it, the border and medallion body run a soft brick rust with a slight terracotta cast, the kind of red that sits well with leather, walnut and warm wall colors rather than fighting them. The medallion center and the outer border rosettes drop to a deep, almost black navy, giving the design its weight and its focal point. Against those three main tones the weaver used a very light powder blue, used generously in the palmettes and the leaf forms so the rug never reads as only red and cream, plus sage green in the corner spandrel details, camel and gold in the knot work panels, and small touches of peach and dark burgundy in the vinery. Under lamplight the wool takes a low sheen and the rust warms up; in daylight the ivory field opens out and the blues come forward.

Origin and Weaving Quality

This rug was made in India, which is where most of the world's good contemporary hand-knotted weaving is now done, and we say that with confidence. The Serapi pattern is a village drawing from the Heriz district, and the weavers working it today in the Indian workshops have inherited it intact: the same stepped medallion, the same turtle border, the same handspun wool logic. What you get for the money is a heavy, honest rug. Look at the back photograph and you can see the knot rows sitting straight and consistent, with the design reading almost as clearly from behind as from the front, which is the practical test of a well woven piece. The 3/8" wool pile is dense enough to take real traffic in a living room or dining room for decades, and because the rug is new and never used, the pile height and the colors are exactly as they left the loom.