8'9" x 12' Aubusson Flat Weave Rug | French Rose Medallion & Cornucopia Corners | Brand New

This 8'9" x 12' rug is a hand woven Aubusson in the French 18th century manner, made entirely without pile so the drawing sits flat and crisp against a cotton foundation. The face is wool, worked in a tapestry technique that reads almost like a painted panel: a shaped ivory reserve strewn with open roses, a rust field around it, and four cornucopias spilling flowers into the corners. Because there is no pile to crush, a flat weave of this kind stays smooth under furniture and sits low at thresholds and under a dining table, which is part of why the 9 x 12 format works so well in formal rooms. It is brand new and never used, and every rug we ship carries its certificate of authenticity confirming that it is genuinely handmade.

Design and Motifs

The layout follows the classic Aubusson formula. A large cartouche shaped reserve holds an open scatter of 22 single roses and buds, each one shaded with its own leaves so the flowers appear to float rather than repeat. The reserve is outlined by a beaded guilloche band, and two circular roundels, one at the top and one at the bottom, each frame a pair of cabbage roses in salmon and rose pink. Beyond the reserve, leafy vine sprays climb inward while four cornucopias, ribboned and tipped in ivory, pour roses toward the center. Large acanthus scrolls curl around them and terminate in stylized rosettes. The outer frame carries a wide ivory panel of trailing leaf vine at each end, then a twisted rope band, a row of lotus petal tips and a plain rust outer edge, the same architectural layering you see in French tapestry borders.

A Rust, Beige and Green Palette

Three families of color do all the work here. The field and outer frame are a deep rust that leans toward brick and wine under warm light, saturated but slightly dusty rather than bright, which keeps the whole rug quiet. Against it, the center reserve and the end panels are a soft beige to ivory with a faint straw cast, giving the flowers a bright ground to sit on. The foliage is worked in olive and sage green with darker moss shadowing, and the roses run from pale cream through peach and salmon to a clear rose pink, with touches of soft brown and camel in the stems, the rope band and the roundel outlines. There is no black and no harsh white anywhere, so the contrast stays gentle. The palette sits comfortably with mahogany and walnut furniture, cream upholstery and warm parquet, as the photographs on wood flooring show.

Aubusson Design, Woven in China

Aubusson is a town in central France whose workshops wove flat tapestry floor coverings for great houses from the 17th century onward, in a lighter, more decorative idiom than the pile Savonnerie made for the crown. Today that design tradition is kept alive mainly by Chinese workshops, and this rug is honestly Made in China: hand woven on a vertical loom, wool face on cotton warps, with each color block built up by hand and the outlines drawn by eye from a scaled cartoon. Look at the corner and edge photographs and you can see the discipline in it, tight even beat, straight selvages and clean curves in the acanthus without the puckering you get from rushed work. As an Oriental rug in a European idiom it occupies its own niche, and in the 9 x 12 size it covers a full formal room with the drawing still centered and readable.