8'11" x 12'1" Jaipur Oriental Rug | Black Field All Over Floral | Inset Panel Medallion | Hand-Knotted Wool

This 8'11" x 12'1" hand-knotted rug was woven in Jaipur, India, on a cotton foundation with a dense 3/8" wool pile, and it is the kind of traditional Oriental rug that reads as formal from across a room and as handwork the moment you kneel on it. The black ground is unusual and it does the heavy lifting here, pushing every gold, green and brown flower forward. The weave is tight and even, the ends are hand finished with natural cotton fringe, and the piece is brand new and never used. It ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming it as a genuine hand-knotted piece.

Design and Motifs

The drawing is a classic all over floral built on a lattice of curling vines and serrated leaves, with large palmettes and open lotus blossoms set at each intersection. What makes it distinctive is the center: instead of a conventional lobed medallion, the weaver set an entire small rug into the middle of the field, an ivory panel with its own miniature border, its own inner medallion and its own corner spandrels, framed by a checkered guard stripe. It is a rug within a rug, and it gives the field an architectural focus that a standard medallion would not. Palmette clusters and cypress-like leaf sprays rise symmetrically above and below the panel, and the four corners are resolved with softly shaded spandrels. The main border carries green and ivory cartouches linked by paired leaves and small rosettes, flanked by narrow floral guard bands on either side, which is the kind of finish that keeps a 9x12 size floor covering from looking busy.

Color: Black Ground with Gold, Green and Brown

The field is a true black, dense and even, with no abrash streaking across the width. Against it the palette runs warm: antique gold and honey in the vines and palmettes, buttery ivory in the center panel and in the highlights of the larger flowers, and soft rose and salmon shading inside the blossoms. Sage and bottle green appear in the leaves and in the border cartouches, cooling the gold and keeping the whole thing from reading as brassy. Brown and a muted aubergine turn up in the flower centers and in the shading of the spandrels, adding depth where the drawing is heaviest. The main border is a wide gold band, so the black field is framed rather than fenced in, and the outer edge returns to black for a clean finish. Under lamplight the gold warms considerably; in daylight the greens come forward and the rug reads cooler and more antique.

Woven in Jaipur, India

Jaipur in Rajasthan is one of the great modern weaving centers, and India is where most of the world's good contemporary hand-knotted work is now made. Workshops there weave traditional classical drawing on cotton warps with a tight, disciplined knot, and the standard of finishing, the straightness of the edges, the evenness of the selvedges, the clean hand-knotted ends, is as good as anything being produced today. The wool here is dense and springy at 3/8", cropped level so the outlines of every leaf and palmette stay crisp, and heavy enough to take traffic in a main room for decades. The back shows the knot count clearly and the pattern is legible from behind, which is always the honest test. If you are comparing hand-knotted Oriental rugs in this size range, this one offers a rare black ground and an inset panel center that you will not see repeated on the next floor.