8' x 10'5" Savonnerie Rug | French Floral Design | Hand-Knotted Wool, Approx. 200 KPSI

This 8' x 10'5" rug is a hand-knotted reading of the French Savonnerie style, the 17th century court manner of drawing flowers in full bloom, with ribbons, scrolls and bouquets floating on a quiet ground rather than the tight geometry of tribal weaving. It is new, never used, and woven at roughly 200 knots per square inch on a cotton foundation with a 100% wool pile, which is a high count for a room size piece of this type and is what allows the rose heads and curling leaf tips to stay crisp. At 8 feet by 10 feet 5 inches it sits comfortably in the standard 8 x 10 area rug footprint, with enough length to run the full seating group. Every rug ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The field is drawn as one continuous garden rather than a rigid medallion layout. At the center sits a dense rosette cluster, full cabbage roses and open daisies ringed by buds and slim olive leaves, held inside a pair of facing strapwork scrolls that read almost like the arms of a cartouche. From there the drawing opens outward into long curving vine stems, ribbon loops and loose bouquets that repeat across the ground and turn back on themselves at the 4 corners, each corner anchored by its own spray of roses and a fan of acanthus. A narrow inner line defines the field, then the main border carries a scrolling vine with pomegranate buds and small blossoms, edged on the outside by a band of pearl beading and a striped guard stripe that runs into the plain ivory ends. The 5th photograph shows how the border corners resolve cleanly, the sign of a weaver following a cartoon rather than improvising at the edge.

Color Palette

The ground is a pale beige with a light sage-green wash through it, a shade that behaves like a neutral in a room but is never flat, because the wool takes light and shifts from cream to soft celadon as you cross it. The flowers are the color story: dusty rose, salmon and coral for the larger blooms, with ivory and pale butter yellow rosettes set among them for contrast, and deep brick red reserved for the few flower hearts that need to hold the eye. Foliage moves between olive, sea green and a smoky teal, while a powdery light blue runs through the smaller blossoms and the ribbon scrolls, cooling the pinks so the rug never reads sweet. Outlines are worked in a fine rust-brown that draws every petal edge. The border lightens to cream so the whole design appears to sit inside a frame rather than run off the edge, and the beading band picks the rose tone back up in miniature. Buyers working with beige and ivory rugs will find this one warmer and more forgiving than a flat cream.

Origin and Weaving Quality

The rug was hand-knotted in Pakistan, where the weaving houses around Lahore have spent decades specializing in fine European pattern work of exactly this kind, taking the French Savonnerie and Aubusson cartoons and reproducing them knot by knot on the loom. It is a true Oriental rug in construction, cotton warp and weft with a hand-spun wool pile, clipped low so the drawing stays legible. Approximately 200 knots per square inch puts it well above standard commercial production, and the 6th photograph shows the tight, even knot lines along the end finish with the cotton warps hand-tied into fringe rather than machine sewn. The wool has the slightly glossy handle that comes from good fleece and a proper wash, and the back is flat and square with no drawn-in edges, meaning the rug lies true from the first day it is unrolled and will take years of foot traffic without the pattern blurring.