8' x 10' Chinese Silk Oriental Rug | Radiant Dome Medallion & Arabesque Lattice | Brand New

This is a completely silk piece, pile and foundation both, knotted by hand in a scale of drawing that very few workshops still attempt. The layout is a dome, or Dom, composition: a small gold rosette at the dead center from which ring after ring of ogival compartments radiate outward until they reach the border, the same illusion you get standing under a tiled cupola and looking straight up. At 8' x 10' the whole dome resolves in a single view, which is exactly how the design was meant to be read. The back tag photographed with the rug reads "GENUINE HAND WOVEN ORIENTAL RUG, Rug No: 56276, Size: 8 x 10". It has never been on a floor, and it ships with a certificate of authenticity documenting the weave, material and measurements. If you are shopping the standard 8 x 10 rug size, this is the fine silk end of that shelf.

Design and Motifs

The field is built from hundreds of pointed ogival cells, each one outlined in ivory and each one filled with its own miniature arabesque: a vase, a curling split leaf, a spray of blossoms, a cross rosette. No two consecutive rings repeat the same filler, so the eye keeps moving outward instead of settling. At the center sits a gold 8 petal rosette inside a starred cartouche, ringed by tiny navy palmettes that read almost like lettering from a distance. The four corners are weighted with the darkest compartments in the rug, which anchors the composition and keeps the dome from floating. Framing all of it is a triple border: a slim ivory vine guard, a broad pale blue turtle and rosette band with reciprocal cartouches, and a herringbone stripe in salmon that separates the two, finishing in a solid navy outer edge and silk fringe.

A Graded Wash of Blue, Ivory and Gold

Color here is organized as a gradient rather than a set of blocks. The center is warm: honey gold, apricot and soft camel around the rosette. Moving outward the compartments cool through pale sky blue and celadon into a bright turquoise teal, then into sapphire, then into a deep inky navy at the perimeter, so the rug looks lit from the middle. Ivory outlines every cell and keeps the transitions clean. Scattered through the fillers are rose pink and true red blossoms, sage and olive leaves and small chips of pale blue, which is what gives the surface its liveliness on close inspection. Because the pile is silk, every one of these tones reads two ways: walk one direction and the field is bright and silvery, walk the other and the same blues deepen and the golds go bronze.

Origin and Weaving Quality

This rug was made in China, in the tradition of silk workshop weaving that took the classical dome and lattice repertoire and pushed the knot count high enough to draw it properly. That is the honest way to judge an Oriental rug of this type: not by the label but by whether the curved line holds. Look at the border scroll in the close-up photographs, where a vine turns a full circle inside a band only a few inches wide without a single stepped edge, and at the compartment outlines in the field, which stay the same width from the center to the last ring. That level of control requires a very fine, very even knot on a silk warp, and it is why the back of this piece is nearly as legible as the front. The handle is thin, cool and heavy for its size, and the fringe is a continuation of the foundation rather than something added.