8' x 10' Chinese Needlepoint Rug | French Floral Bouquets on Ivory | Flat Woven Wool, Perfect Condition

This is a flat woven wool needlepoint in the French floral taste, 8' x 10', worked in soft ivory with loose garden bouquets thrown across the whole field. There is no pile at all, so the surface sits low and smooth, the drawing reads with the clarity of embroidery rather than the blur of a cut pile, and the rug slides easily under a dining table or a low sofa. Condition is perfect, with full even surface, clean ivory ground and no fading or wear in any of the four corners. It is a comfortable choice for anyone shopping 8x10 rugs who wants pattern and color without weight or height. Every rug we sell ships with our certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The layout belongs to the family of all over floral rugs, with no medallion and no central anchor. Instead, full blown blooms are scattered in loose sprays, as though cut flowers had been laid down on pale linen: ruffled rose red carnations and peonies, broad saffron chrysanthemums with shaded petals, pale striped tulips, small white daisies, and dense clusters of powder blue hydrangea. Long leafy stems in 3 or 4 shades of green tie the groups together and give the eye a direction to travel. A slim olive gold guard line frames the field, then the border repeats the same bouquets at a slightly larger scale, with the corners mitered so the flowers turn cleanly at 4 points instead of being cut off. Small buds, curling tendrils and tiny berries fill the gaps, which is why the ivory ground never looks empty.

A Study in Ivory, Rose and Garden Green

The ground is a warm ivory, closer to unbleached linen than to white, with the faintest cream and oatmeal shift across the weave that keeps it from looking flat. Against it, the strongest notes are the rose reds, which run from a deep carnation red at the heart of each bloom out to a dusty salmon pink at the petal edges. The golds are the second voice: saffron and honey in the chrysanthemums, with ochre and caramel shading where the petals turn. Greens do the structural work, from pale sage and gray green on the undersides of the leaves through olive to a dark forest green in the shadowed foliage. Powder blue and slate blue hydrangeas cool the whole scheme down, and touches of soft white and blush pink appear in the smaller tulips and daisies. The thin olive gold line around the field is the only hard edge of color in the rug. For buyers working with pale walls and light floors, it sits comfortably with other ivory and beige rugs.

Chinese Needlepoint in the French Tradition

Needlepoint of this type is made in China, where workshops took up the floral vocabulary of 18th and 19th century French floor coverings and have been producing it at a high standard for decades. The technique is entirely handwork: wool is worked stitch by stitch across a cotton ground until the design is complete, so the quality of the piece is measured by stitch count and by how faithfully the shading follows the original painted drawing. Here the petal shading moves through several tones within a single flower, which only happens when the maker is willing to change yarn constantly rather than block in solid color. Because there is no pile to crush, the surface stays flat and the pattern stays legible for many years, and the low profile is part of why this style is a practical Oriental rug choice for formal rooms. Handle the edges and you can feel how firmly the wool has been packed down.