8'9" x 11' Chinese Peking Rug | Teal Field with Ivory Floral Border | Semi Antique Art Deco

This is a Peking room size piece in the classic Chinese Art Deco manner, 8'9" x 11' of hand-knotted wool on a cotton foundation, with a 3/8" pile that still stands plush and springy underfoot. The drawing is deliberately quiet: a wide open teal blue field filled edge to edge with small scrolling cloudbands, framed by a scalloped ivory and antique gold border carrying flower vases and loose blossom sprays at the ends and corners. Nothing competes for attention, which is exactly why a rug like this settles a room instead of shouting at it. It is a genuine hand woven Oriental rug, and it ships with our certificate of authenticity confirming origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The field carries no medallion at all. Instead the weaver filled the whole teal ground with a repeating lattice of small curled cloudbands, a motif drawn from Chinese silk and porcelain rather than from any woven medallion tradition, and the effect up close is closer to damask than to a rug pattern. Around it runs a bold scalloped ivory band, its edge cut into curling cloud scrolls that break into the blue in long, lazy waves. At the top and bottom centers sits a lidded urn holding a spray of blossoms, and matching bouquets of coral, rose and olive flowers occupy the 4 corners. The side borders are punctuated by single stylized lotus blossoms in coral against the plain gold ground. Look at the close-up photographs and you can see the sculpted outlining around each flower and leaf, a hand-carved finish where the pile is clipped down along the color lines so the motifs stand in relief.

A Soft Mix of Green and Blue

The dominant color is a deep teal that sits right between sea green and denim blue, and it shifts constantly across the field. Where the light catches the pile one way it reads green, the other way it reads blue, and horizontal bands of natural abrash run through the ground in lighter and deeper tones. The cloud scrolls within the field are worked in a pale silvery sage that barely separates from the ground, giving that tone on tone depth. Against all that cool color, the border is warm: an ivory that has mellowed toward antique gold and honey, with a soft tan in the shaded areas. The flowers are the only saturated notes, coral and salmon petals, dusty rose, a touch of magenta at the centers, and leaves in chartreuse, olive and deep pine green. The outer edge returns to the same dark teal, which frames the whole composition and keeps the pale border from floating.

Peking Weaving and Quality

Peking rugs come from the workshops in and around Beijing, and the style this one follows is the one those workshops perfected for the Western market between the 1920s and 1930s: open uncluttered grounds, cloud and floral motifs taken from Chinese decorative arts, and a heavy wool pile finished by hand carving. The weave is not about knot count the way a fine city workshop piece is; the point is the wool. Chinese highland fleece is long stapled and lustrous, and at 3/8" it takes dye with a sheen that you can see changing as you walk around the rug. Combined with a firm cotton foundation and straight, even selvages, that gives a heavy, flat-lying rug built for real traffic. Made in China, honestly and entirely by hand, and in perfect unused condition at 8'9" x 11'.