8'9" x 12'3" Sino Oriental Rug | Qum Design Silk Pile | Red & Ivory, Never Used

This is a top quality Sino silk Oriental rug woven entirely by hand in a classic Qum drawing, measuring 8'9" x 12'3" with a close-cropped 1/4" silk pile that reads almost like polished lacquer when the light moves across it. The field is a deep tomato red carrying a dense all over floral scheme around a domed central medallion, framed by ivory spandrels and a navy main border. At this scale it sits comfortably in the 9x12 area rug range that most formal rooms are built around, and it has never been used: the pile still stands square and the fringe is untouched. Every rug we ship leaves Freeport with a certificate of authenticity documenting its size, materials, weave and origin.

Design and Motifs

The drawing follows the Qum design formula closely. At the center sits a domed, many-layered medallion built out of concentric rings of palmettes and scrolling leaf work, with an 8 petal rosette at its core and a pair of slender pendants running up and down the long axis. Around it the field is filled edge to edge with curved vine, open roses, buds and split-leaf arabesques, drawn small and repeated with a discipline that keeps the pattern reading as one continuous garden rather than scattered blossoms. The 4 corner spandrels are worked in ivory with their own vine and palmette arrangement, which is what gives the field its lobed, cusped outline. The border system runs 5 bands deep: a navy main border of alternating rosettes and turning leaf, an ivory guard stripe of small roses on either side, and narrow red and floral outer stripes that close the composition. The close crop of the pile keeps every one of those small elements legible from standing height.

Red, Ivory and the Full Palette

The ground is a saturated tomato red that deepens toward burgundy in the shadow of the pile and lifts to a warmer cherry tone where the silk catches light, which is why the rug appears to shift as you walk around it. Against that field the floral work is carried in ivory, bone and warm cream, with a great deal of soft gold and honey in the medallion and the larger palmettes. Cool accents do the balancing: sage and celadon green in the leaves, a muted slate blue in a few of the smaller blossoms, and touches of pale salmon and old rose in the open flower heads. The spandrels are the lightest part of the rug, an ivory ground that frames the red and keeps the corners from going heavy. The main border reverses the scheme, a near black navy carrying gold, rust and ivory flowers, and the ivory guard stripes and undyed fringe finish the edges cleanly. Overall it is a warm rug, red led, with enough ivory and green to sit against oak flooring, walnut furniture or a cream wall.

Sino Weaving and the Quality of the Knotting

Sino rugs are hand-knotted in China on Persian city cartoons, and the best of that production, which is what this piece represents, is aimed squarely at collectors who want a fine floral drawing in pure silk. A Qum cartoon is unforgiving: the curved vine, the tiny rosettes and the layered medallion only resolve if the knot count is high enough to draw a true curve, and the weaver here had the density to do it. The silk pile is clipped to 1/4", low enough that the outlines stay crisp and the surface reflects light the way only silk does. The back is even, the selvages are tightly wrapped and the fringe is the natural continuation of the warps, hand-finished rather than sewn on. For a room-size 8'9" x 12'3" piece in this condition, brand new and never walked on, the combination of scale, material and drawing is uncommon.