8' x 10' Chinese Needlepoint Aubusson Rug | Black Field, Ivory Floral Medallion | Double Knot, Perfect Condition

Opened out to a full 8' x 10', this needlepoint piece reads like a French Aubusson drawing room floor: a pale ivory acanthus medallion at the center, loose bouquets of roses, tulips and blue blooms scattered across a deep black ground, and a braided leaf and ribbon band pulling the whole composition closed. The surface is a flat wool weave worked stitch by stitch in the double knot method, so there is almost no pile height, which is exactly why needlepoint behaves so well under a dining table, a writing desk or a low sofa. Condition is perfect, with the stitching tight, the wool unfaded and the ivory selvage still crisp at every corner. It ships with our certificate of authenticity, and in a market full of machine-printed florals it is a genuine piece of handwork among 8x10 Oriental rugs.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a broad acanthus leaf rosette, its curling leaves shaded from cream into tan and olive and gathered around a small ring at the very middle. Around it runs a lobed frame of sage ribbons and laurel scrolls that breaks into 4 scrolled ends, each one tied off with a cluster of small cream roses and buds. Beyond that frame the black field is left open and then strewn with naturalistic sprays rather than a repeating lattice: full cabbage roses, striped tulips, bellflowers, forget-me-nots and long serrated leaves that lean toward the 4 corners, with heavier garlands massing along the top and bottom ends. The border is a single continuous braid of overlapping leaves with a salmon ribbon spiraling through it, bracketed by narrow black guard lines, a quiet finish that keeps all the drawing inside the field where it belongs.

The Black Ground, Sage Green and Soft Rose Palette

The field is a true unbroken black, the darkest possible backdrop for pastel flowers, and it is what gives this piece its dressed-up, candlelit look. Against it the medallion works through ivory, cream and a wheat tan with olive shading on the leaf tips, so the center glows rather than shouts. Foliage is carried in sage and celadon green with deeper moss accents in the border braid. The flowers bring soft cornflower and slate blue, a dusty salmon rose that repeats in the ribbon of the outer band, and smaller notes of pale lavender, peach and chalk white in the buds. There is no harsh contrast anywhere, which is the mark of good needlepoint dyeing, and the effect in a room is a quiet pastel bouquet floating on a dark floor. Collectors shopping black and ivory Oriental rugs will recognize how rarely a black ground stays this even over 80 square feet.

Chinese Needlepoint in the French Aubusson Tradition

Aubusson, in central France, gave Europe its flat floral floor weaves from the 17th century onward, and the vocabulary here, the acanthus medallion, the ribbon scroll and the strewn bouquets, comes straight out of that workshop tradition. Since the middle of the last century the finest needlepoint of this type has been made by hand in China, where the workshops stitch wool yarn through a cotton canvas grid square by square, and the double knot method used on this piece lays down two passes per stitch for a firmer, heavier and more durable result than ordinary single-stitch needlepoint. That is slow, entirely manual work: a room-size 8' x 10' panel represents months at the frame. If you are weighing it against a knotted pile piece, our guide to what separates a Persian from an Oriental rug explains how the two constructions differ, and why a flat needlepoint is the one decorators reach for when the furniture has to sit level.