8'2" x 12'1" Agra Oriental Rug | Antique All-Over Floral Design | Sage Green & Coral

This is a new rug drawn from an old book. Hand-knotted in India in the Agra tradition, it takes the muted palette and wide palmette drawing of the 19th century Agra workshops and reweaves it in dense, hand-spun natural wool on a cotton foundation. The field reads sage green shifting toward warm camel in the light, framed by a broad coral main border, and the pile is cut low and even so every outline stays crisp. At 8'2" x 12'1" it covers a full living or dining area with furniture set on top of it, and because it is a faithful antique-style Oriental rug rather than a restored one, you get the softened look without the fragility. Every rug ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The field carries a balanced all-over floral composition built on a lattice of thin vines, with no single dominant medallion. Large lobed palmettes anchor the centerline in coral and saffron gold, flanked by serrated lancet leaves, 4 petal rosettes and small buds that fill the ground without crowding it. Deep wine cartouches with teal blue leaf sprays appear at the top and bottom of the field, and cusped arch forms in coral and dark blue close the composition at each end. The main border runs a repeating split palmette and vase motif in ivory, wine and gold on coral, drawn large enough to read from across a room, and it turns the 4 corners cleanly rather than breaking at the miter. Two narrow guard stripes on either side, one a boteh and rosette chain on ivory, the other a fine zigzag meander, keep the whole frame tidy.

A Sage Green Field With Coral, Teal and Saffron

Color is the reason to buy this one. The ground is a soft sage green with a camel undertone that warms or cools depending on the light, which is exactly the tonality collectors look for in old Agra weaving. Against it, the coral border reads as a dusty salmon rather than a bright orange, with peach and ivory passages inside the palmettes and small rust and brick notes in the flower heads. Saffron gold carries the larger palmettes and leaf forms, while short strokes of teal and dark peacock blue punctuate the field and border, giving the eye somewhere cool to land. Chocolate brown outlines all the drawing and keeps the pale tones from washing together, and deep wine burgundy supplies the darkest accents. Nothing here is loud, so the rug sits comfortably with warm woods, cream upholstery, brass and aged leather.

Agra Weaving and the Quality of This Piece

Agra, in northern India, has woven in the Mughal court tradition for centuries, and the city's name still stands for large format floral drawing in soft mineral tones. India is where most of the world's good contemporary hand-knotted work is now made, and this piece shows why: the weave is fine and dense for a room size format, the back is tight and legible with clear knot rows, and the wool is a strong natural fleece with a quiet luster instead of a chemical shine. Selvages are hand-wrapped, the fringes are the warps themselves rather than an applied finish, and the rug lies dead flat. Among hand-knotted Indian Oriental rugs at this scale, a weave this dense in an antique drawing is the piece that holds up to daily traffic for decades.