8'11" x 11'9" Chinese Art Deco Rug | Navy Blue Field with Pastel Floral Sprays | Circa 1950s

This is a 1950's Chinese Art Deco room-size piece, hand-knotted in lustrous wool on a cotton foundation, and it works the way the best Deco weavings do: a wide midnight navy field left almost entirely empty, with two pastel flowering branches thrown across it on the diagonal. At 8'11" x 11'9" it sits squarely in the 9x12 Oriental rug range, so it will carry a sofa, two armchairs and a coffee table with pile to spare on all four sides. Decorators reach for this type of Oriental rug because the quiet open ground reads almost like a solid color from across a room, with the flowers doing the talking up close. The pile is deep, the wool still has its original sheen, and the piece ships with our certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

There is no border and no medallion here, which is the whole point of the Art Deco idiom. Instead a single curving branch climbs from the lower right corner and spreads into a full bouquet of open peonies and cabbage roses, surrounded by 5 petal blossoms, tiny berry clusters and long pointed maple and willow leaves. A second, lighter spray answers it in the upper left corner, smaller in scale and drawn with more air between the stems, so the eye travels corner to corner across the empty ground. The drawing is naturalistic rather than stylized: every leaf is shaded from tip to stem, the big roses are built up petal by petal, and a few blossoms are rendered as flat rosettes to break the rhythm. Asymmetry is deliberate, which is why this piece looks modern under contemporary furniture while still being a genuine hand-knotted weaving.

A Midnight Navy Ground with Pastel Bloom

The field is a deep navy blue that goes nearly black in low light and lifts to a clear ink blue where sunlight catches the pile, with gentle tonal movement across the width from the hand-dyed yarn. Against it the flowers are pitched in soft, chalky pastels: salmon and dusty rose peonies, a warmer coral rose or two, apricot and rust orange buds, and several blossoms in a pale celadon green that cools the whole palette down. The foliage runs from sage and olive to a fresh leaf green, with mustard and old gold leaves scattered through for warmth, and the finest tendrils are drawn in a tan beige that matches the ivory fringe at both ends. Nothing is bright or acidic; the contrast comes from dark against light rather than from saturated color, which is why the rug settles easily with cream upholstery, walnut and brass.

Chinese Art Deco Weaving and Quality

Rugs of this type came out of the Chinese workshops that built their reputation on the American market from the 1920's onward, chiefly around Tianjin, and the look carried on into the post-war years when this one was woven. The weaving priorities are different from a city workshop in the East: a moderate knot count with a thick, heavy, lustrous pile, a sturdy cotton foundation, and designs that are meant to be read across open space rather than through knot density. The wool is the real asset, long-staple and glossy, sheared high so the flowers sit up almost in relief, which you can see in the close-up photographs and along the folded corner. Note too how the pile has worn evenly after decades of use, with no bald patches and the fringe intact, and if you want to understand the clues that place a piece in a decade, our guide on how to date an Oriental rug covers the same features our buyers check by hand.