8'2" x 9'10" Chinese Aubusson Rug | Black Field Bamboo Silk Pile | Rose Medallion, Brand New

This is a brand new hand-knotted Oriental rug woven in China in the French Aubusson manner, with a bamboo silk pile laid over a cotton foundation. The pile has been hand-carved around every flower and leaf, so the drawing sits in low relief above a jet black ground and catches light the way a cut velvet does. At 8'2" x 9'10" it sits squarely in the most requested room size we sell, and it is one of the cleaner options among 8x10 area rugs for a room that already has a lot of pattern on the walls. The piece has never been on a floor, the fringes are original and untrimmed, and it ships with our certificate of authenticity confirming that it is 100% hand-knotted.

Design and Motifs

The layout is pure Aubusson: a large oval medallion floating on an open field, with the pattern pushed to the edges rather than covering every inch. Inside the oval sits a bouquet of full blown roses, peonies and asters with slender leafy stems drawn in a naturalistic European hand, framed first by a thin dark outline, then by a wide ring of lavender and slate scrolling acanthus set with small diamond and shell devices. Around the medallion runs a continuous wreath of flower garlands that swags out to 4 corners, and each corner of the field carries a bracket outlined in a fine cream keyline, a detail borrowed from 18th century French panelling. The wide ivory border repeats the theme with big drawn roses, curling vine tendrils and small fan-shaped shells, and a narrow black band on each side closes the composition. The hand-carving is the detail worth noting: the outline of every petal is scissor-cut by hand after weaving, which is why the flowers read three dimensional in the close-up photographs.

A Black Field Lit by Rose, Sage and Cream

The field is a deep, even black that reads almost blue-black where the bamboo silk turns against the nap and near-charcoal where it lies with it. Against that ground the palette is deliberately soft: dusty rose and salmon pink in the large roses, a warm cornflower blue and a deeper slate blue in the peonies and asters, sage and olive green through the foliage, and clean ivory in the smaller blossoms and the guard lines. The medallion ground is a pale butter ivory that warms toward oatmeal at its outer ring, and the scroll ring surrounding it moves through lavender, dove grey and antique gold. The wide outer border repeats that same ivory with rose, mauve and blue-grey accents, so the eye travels from the bright edge, across the black, and lands on the pale center. It is a high-contrast piece without being loud, and the black ground makes it unusually forgiving in a room with dark hardwood, a navy sofa or a lot of brass.

Woven in China in the Aubusson Tradition

The original Aubusson workshops in central France wove flat tapestry floor coverings for the aristocracy from the 17th century onward, and their floral medallion drawings became the standard reference for formal European floor design. Chinese workshops adopted that vocabulary and translated it into a hand-knotted pile rug, which is what you are looking at here: French drawing, Asian weaving discipline. The knotting is fine and regular enough to carry curved stems and overlapping petals without breaking them into steps, and the back photograph shows a tight, even cotton foundation with no distortion at the selvedges. Bamboo silk gives the surface its sheen and a cool, smooth handle underfoot, and because the pile is sheared low and then carved, the pattern will hold its crisp outline rather than blurring as the rug settles into a room. Made in China, brand new, and in perfect condition throughout.