8'10" x 12'1" Chinese Aubusson Rug | Flat Weave | Peach and Cream

A large Aubusson in the Savonnerie manner, woven in China and measuring 8'10" x 12'1". A tall oval medallion fills most of the field, a bouquet of roses at its centre, and the beige ground around it carries flower garlands and a shell basket in each corner. The surface is flat and without pile, so the drawing stays crisp and the rug lies close to the floor.

The design

The medallion is built in rings: a thin dark red outline, a band of pale blue, then a peach ground scattered with small rose sprays and four-petalled blossoms. Inside sits a cream cartouche of interlaced strapwork holding the main bouquet, open roses and a wide peach-centred blossom with olive and brown foliage, and a ribbon of small beads trailing from it. Cream acanthus leaves unfurl from the medallion on all four sides, some of them wrapping small cartouches with single flower heads. Beyond them the plain beige field is crossed by a garland of roses and pale blue cornflowers that links corner to corner, and each corner holds a fluted shell basket spilling pink peonies, roses and a few red carnations over rounded fruit. The rectangular outer frame is deliberately quiet: narrow peach and cream stripes closed by a dark selvedge.

The colour

The dominant tone is a soft peach, used both for the medallion ground and for the wider beige-peach field, and it shifts between a warmer clay and a dusty rose depending on how the light crosses the weave. Against it the scrollwork is cream, barely a shade lighter in places, which is what gives the carved look to the acanthus. The flowers carry the stronger notes: rose pink in the peonies and full-blown roses, a few deep burgundy carnations, and a chalky light blue in the small cornflowers and in the band around the medallion. Leaves run from sage to olive to a dark brown, and that same brown returns in the narrow bound edge, which holds the pale palette together.

The making

This is a flat weave, worked without pile, so the face is a single plane of colour and the reverse shows the same design in slightly muted form, as the rolled-back corner in the photographs makes clear. Colour areas meet in the clean vertical joins typical of tapestry work, and the ends are finished with a plain woven band rather than a knotted fringe. It was made in China to a French Aubusson Savanerrie drawing. The table gives the age as recent and the condition as perfect.