8'9" x 11'9" Indian Jaipur Rug | Berry Red & Ivory All Over Floral | Hand-Knotted Wool, Never Used

This 8'9" x 11'9" Jaipur rug is hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation, with a 3/8" pile that still carries the tight, upright nap of a piece that has never been on a floor. It is a genuine Oriental rug in the classical manner: a berry red field worked edge to edge with flowering lattice, contained by a broad ivory border that lifts the whole piece. At roughly 9 by 12, it sits in the most useful of the 9x12 area rug proportions, large enough to carry a full seating group or a 10 seat dining table with chairs pulled back. Every rug we ship leaves with a certificate of authenticity confirming it is hand-knotted and describing its construction, materials and size.

Design and Motifs

The field is an all over floral composition built on a soft diamond lattice. Ivory diamond cartouches alternate with tall shield-shaped palmettes and small covered vase forms, each one filled with its own miniature bouquet of rosettes, lotus heads and serrated leaves. Between them the ground is never left empty: thin vines carry 6 and 8 petal rosettes, buds and tendrils into every gap, which is what gives the rug its dense, embroidered look from across a room. Look closely at the close-up photograph and you can see how the drawing repeats without ever sitting in a rigid grid, the curling gold split-leaf scrolls at the 4 corners of each cartouche shifting slightly from one repeat to the next. The wide ivory main border runs a stately palmette and rosette meander with paired leaves, flanked by narrow guard stripes of running vine, and the corners resolve cleanly rather than being cut off, which is the mark of a properly drawn cartoon.

A Berry Red Field Against Warm Ivory

The ground is a deep berry red, closer to ripe cherry and wine than to orange-toned brick, and it shifts noticeably with the light: full and saturated in daylight, almost aubergine under a lamp. Against it, the ivory of the border and the lattice cartouches reads warm and slightly creamy rather than stark white. The secondary palette is where the rug earns its interest, with sage and olive green in the leaves, slate and true navy blue in the smaller buds, old gold in the scrolling leaf work, and dusty rose and blush pink in the rosettes. Nothing is loud. The whole set of accents behaves like needlework laid over the red, so the rug sits comfortably with both antique wood and modern upholstery. Anyone shopping red and burgundy rugs will recognize how rare it is to find this depth of red with an ivory border that stays clean rather than turning yellow.

Jaipur Weaving and Quality

Jaipur, in Rajasthan, is one of the great weaving centers of northern India and the design name given to this classical floral format. India is where most of the world's finest contemporary hand-knotted work is now produced, and this piece shows why: the knotting is even across all 105 inches of width, the ivory holds crisp outlines around every motif, and the back photograph shows a tidy, regular knot line on cotton warps with a straight, hand-finished selvage and cotton fringe. The 3/8" wool pile is dense and springy underfoot and has the quiet sheen of good hand-spun fleece. It is brand new and never used, so the buyer gets the full life of the wool rather than someone else's first 10 years.