8'11" x 11'11" Serapi Design Oriental Rug | Coral & Ivory Geometric Medallion | Hand-Knotted in India

This is a big, confident room rug: 8'11" x 11'11" of hand-knotted wool drawn in the Serapi manner, with a single coral and ivory medallion holding the whole field together. It has never been used, the 3/8" wool pile still stands straight off the cotton foundation, and the selvedges and fringes are clean and untouched. At this footprint it works as the anchor for a standard 12 foot wide room, which is exactly the slot most buyers are filling when they search for 9x12 area rugs. Every rug we ship leaves with a certificate of authenticity recording the size, materials, weave and origin, so what is written here is what arrives at your door.

Design and Motifs

The drawing is pure Serapi: an 8 point stepped star medallion on a coral ground, centered on a small ivory framed square rosette set against a near black core. Four gold cartouches sit inside the medallion, each filled with a stiff cluster of palmettes and blossoms, and the whole shape is outlined in ivory so it reads cleanly from across a room. Around it the ivory field carries angular vines, serrated leaves and hooked palmettes, with matching pendants above and below the medallion and broad coral corner spandrels closing the 4 corners. The main border alternates large ivory and gold palmettes with rosettes and curling leaf brackets on a coral ground, flanked by sage green guard stripes of small rosettes and a fine barber pole outline. Everything is built on straight lines and stepped edges rather than curves, which is what separates this family from floral city work and why it sits so comfortably among geometric medallion rugs.

Color Palette

Coral is the governing color here, a warm terracotta red that fills the border, the medallion and the spandrels and shifts slightly lighter and cooler across the field as the light moves. Against it the open ground is a soft beige ivory with a faint cream cast, which is what keeps a rug of this size from feeling heavy. The secondary palette is worked in gold and camel for the cartouches and the larger border palmettes, sage and olive green for the leaves and the inner guard stripes, and a deep navy that reads almost black at the center of the medallion and in the small border accents. Scattered through the field are touches of slate blue, dusty rose and brick, most visible in the close photographs of the medallion. The gentle tonal variation across the coral is abrash, the natural shading that comes from dye lots in a hand-knotted rug, and it gives the surface depth that printed and machine made pieces cannot copy. Overall the rug sits warm and earthy, easy with wood floors, leather, cream walls and brass.

Origin and Weave

This piece was made in India, where the majority of the world's serious contemporary hand-knotted weaving now happens, and where the Serapi design has been kept alive to a high standard by workshops that still tie every knot by hand on a vertical loom. The construction is straightforward and honest: a cotton warp and weft foundation, hand-spun wool pile clipped to 3/8", flat wrapped selvedges and hand-finished fringes, all visible in the photograph of the reverse where the knot rows are even and the pattern shows through clearly. Wool at this density and pile height is built for real use, which is why a rug like this belongs under a dining table or in a busy living room rather than behind a rope. If you are weighing this against city workshop pieces, our guide on what actually separates a Persian rug from an Oriental rug explains where the terms come from and what they mean for price.