8'2" x 10'4" Indian Jaipur Rug | Wool | Coffee Brown and Ivory

A rectangular rug of 8'2" x 10'4", hand-knotted in India in wool with a 3/8" pile. The field is a coffee brown that carries a green cast under daylight, filled edge to edge with flowerheads and leaves, and it is framed by a wide border on a deep gold ground. At a distance the two grounds read as one dark panel set inside one light one; up close the field is as busy as the border. It is in new, perfect condition, and at this size it covers a standard dining or sitting room with a margin of floor showing.

Design

The Jaipur drawing is an all-over floral one, with no medallion. Large lobed palmettes sit on a scrolling vine that runs the length of the field, each one flanked by curved serrated leaves and small eight-petalled rosettes, and the repeat is staggered rather than mirrored so the eye keeps moving. Several palmettes are drawn in dark indigo with cream outlines, which gives the field its scattered dark points. The main border carries alternating rosettes and leafy palmettes, linked by a thin vine, and is held between narrow guard stripes of red carrying a running flower. The corners are resolved properly, the border pattern turning rather than being cut off.

Colour

The field is the coffee brown the table names, but it is a brown mixed toward olive, so in the photographs it swings between bronze and soft green depending on how the light crosses the pile. The border is a deep gold that lightens toward ivory where the wool catches the light, warm enough to hold its own against the darker field rather than simply framing it. Through both grounds run madder red, which also forms the two guard stripes, a dark indigo in the larger flowerheads, and cream in the outlines and small blossoms. Red and gold do most of the work; the brown keeps the whole thing from going bright.

Making

Hand-knotted in India, wool pile at 3/8", on an ivory warp that finishes in plain knotted fringe at both ends. The back photograph shows the pattern legible knot by knot, with the palmettes and vine as clear from behind as from the face, and the shorter pile keeps the fine outlining of the flowerheads sharp. Condition is new and perfect, with full pile and straight, even sides.