8' x 10' Agra Rug | William Morris All-Over Floral | Burgundy & Ivory | Hand-Knotted Wool

This 8' x 10' Agra is a new piece, hand-knotted in India on a cotton foundation with a dense, hand-spun wool pile, and it has never been on a floor. The drawing follows the William Morris vocabulary that Agra workshops have made their own: a deep burgundy field held together by a loose vine lattice, big plumed palmettes at the joints, and a wide ivory border planted with flowering shrubs. It reads as a serious traditional Oriental rug rather than a decorator reproduction, and it sits in the most useful footprint we sell, which is why we keep a full shelf of 8x10 hand-knotted rugs in stock. A certificate of authenticity ships with the rug.

Design and Motifs

The field is a true all over floral design, not a medallion layout, even though one gold 8 petal rosette sits dead center as an anchor. Ivory serrated vines arch across the ground in repeating ogee curves, and at each crossing the weaver set a tall fan-shaped palmette with a shaded cream and camel crown. Between them float smaller rosettes, 5 petal blossoms in soft blue, tight rust buds and long serrated leaves in sage and teal, all drawn with the swelling, botanical line that Morris borrowed from classical Eastern carpets. The wide ivory main border changes the subject completely: alternating coral flowering shrubs and dark green leafy bushes stand on a bare ground, separated by small stylized sprays and a repeating pale green leaf cartouche at the midpoints of each side. Charcoal-navy guard stripes with a running flower vine frame both sides of the border, and a slim copper band threads between them, so all 4 corners resolve cleanly without a broken motif.

Color Palette

The field is a dark wine burgundy with a faint plum cast where the pile catches light, deep enough to make the ivory vinework glow against it. The border ground is a warm unbleached ivory, closer to clotted cream than white, which keeps the contrast rich instead of harsh. Greens do most of the quiet work: a dusty sage in the leaves, a darker bottle green in the border shrubs, and a soft gray-teal in the smaller blossoms. Rust and terracotta carry the border flowers, camel and antique gold shade the palmette crowns, and small hits of cornflower blue and clear red keep the field lively at close range. The guard stripes are a charcoal navy that reads nearly black from standing height. For rooms built around deep reds, this belongs with our other burgundy rugs, and the ivory border gives it enough light to work over pale oak as well as dark walnut.

Agra Weaving and Quality

Agra has woven court-style floral carpets since the Mughal era, and the city remains one of the few places where that tradition is still practiced at a high level on hand-knotted looms. India is where most of the world's good contemporary hand-knotted work is now made, and a piece like this shows why: the knotting is even enough to hold a curved vine through a long arc, the ivory outlines stay the same width across 10 feet of field, and the border repeats line up where they should. The wool is well spun and lanolin-rich, with a clipped medium pile that already has a soft sheen in the photographs and will take decades of real use in a living or dining room. Selvedges are tight and the fringes are the warp ends of a cotton foundation, finished flat and clean, which is what you want on a rug that will be walked on rather than hung.