8' x 10'4" Jaipur Rug | Black & Ivory Traditional All-Over Floral | Lustrous Dense Wool

This is a brand new, never used hand-knotted rug from the Jaipur workshops of Rajasthan, woven in the classic Indo-Persian manner with a jet black field, a wide ivory main border and a tightly packed all-over floral drawing. The wool has been given a luster finish, so the gold and green shading changes depth as you walk around it, and the pile is dense enough that the design holds crisp edges in the close-up photographs. At 8' x 10'4" it covers the standard footprint most buyers shop for among 8x10 Oriental rugs, sitting under a sofa group with front legs on or carrying a table for 6 with chairs pulled back. Every rug we ship leaves Freeport with a certificate of authenticity confirming it is a genuine hand-knotted piece, along with its measurements and origin.

Design and Motifs

There is no central medallion here. Instead the field carries a mirrored all-over layout built from large feathered palmettes, open 8 petal rosettes, small lotus buds and long serrated saz leaves, all joined by thin curling vines that scroll back on themselves. Look at the center of the field in the detail photographs and you can see the axis clearly: paired leaves meet nose to nose around a single small rosette, then the whole arrangement repeats up and down the length. The ivory main border runs a procession of broad leafy palmettes separated by upright flower sprays, framed on both sides by an olive and rust guard stripe of tiny stars and blossoms. The drawing style belongs to the formal court tradition, with curved outlines rather than the straight angular lines of village weaving, which is why the vines look continuous rather than stepped.

A Black Field Lit by Gold, Green and Rust

The field is a true deep black, almost ink-like, and it does the work of a dark gallery wall: every color laid on top of it reads brighter than it would on red or ivory. The brightest note is a clear saffron gold used for the vine outlines and rosette petals. Around it sit soft sage and olive greens in the leaves, a muted rust and terracotta in the palmette hearts, dusty rose and antique pink in the smaller flowers, and tiny flecks of pale sky blue and deep garnet that only appear when you look closely at the knots. The main border shifts the balance completely, a warm creamy ivory ground with the same gold, green and rust palette repeated, so the eye moves from dark center to light frame without any harsh jump. The luster of the wool means the black field looks softer and slightly silvered where light crosses the pile, then returns to solid black from the other direction.

Jaipur Weaving and Quality of the Knot

Jaipur, in the state of Rajasthan, is one of the main centers of fine hand-knotted weaving in India, and India is where most of the world's good contemporary hand-knotted work is now made. The better Jaipur workshops weave from full cartoons in the classical tradition, which is exactly what you are seeing in this piece: a curvilinear floral design that needs a high enough knot count to keep the vines smooth and the leaf tips sharp. The foundation is cotton, which keeps the rug flat and stable, and the pile is a dense lustrous wool that feels heavy in the hand and resists crushing in traffic. The ends are finished with clean hand-tied fringe and the sides are firmly overcast in black, as the corner photographs show. If you are weighing this against a Persian piece, our guide on the difference between a Persian and an Oriental rug explains what separates the two categories in weave and in price.