8' x 10' French Aubusson Flat Weave Rug | Burgundy Rust Floral Medallion | Brand New

This is a hand-woven French Aubusson in the classic salon format, 8' x 10', with a deep burgundy rust field framed by a broad ivory and gold border. There is no pile on it at all: the wool is woven flat in the tapestry technique, so the surface sits low and smooth, the drawing reads crisply from across the room, and the rug slides under a door or a dining table without a lip. It is brand new and has never been on a floor, which is why the roses in the garland still hold their pale pink and the ivory ground has not yellowed. Among 8x10 area rugs this is one of the easier ones to decorate around, because the palette is warm and quiet rather than saturated. Every rug we ship carries a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a small ivory oval carrying an 8 point gold starburst rosette, ringed by a beaded frame of half moons. That oval floats inside a much larger scalloped ivory cartouche edged in curling acanthus, and the cartouche in turn sits on the burgundy rust field. Around it runs a continuous garland of open roses, peonies and leafy sprays that thickens at the top and bottom of the field into full bouquets. The field itself is drawn with shaped corners and scrolled brackets rather than a straight rectangle, which is the Aubusson habit of treating a rug like a painted ceiling. The wide ivory border is organized in the same way: 4 corner sprays of roses, oval rosette roundels at the middle of each side, and small scroll panels between them, each holding a single flower. A narrow ribbon stripe with pale gray and gold zigzags separates the border from a plain camel brown outer band that finishes the rug cleanly on all 4 sides.

Burgundy Rust, Gold and Sage Green

The field is a burgundy rust, a brick toned wine that leans warm rather than blue, and it is the only strong color in the rug. Everything set against it is deliberately pale: butter gold and cream in the scrollwork, ivory in the medallion and the border ground, and a flat oyster tone in the ribbon stripe. The flowers are painted in dusty rose and shell pink with a few deeper coral buds, and the foliage is a muted sage green with gray in it, never a bright leaf green. The camel brown outer band and the brown selvage pick up the warmest note in the field and close the composition. The overall effect reads as antique from the first glance, soft and slightly faded in the French manner, so the rug settles easily next to cream upholstery, walnut furniture, gilt frames and warm white walls.

The Aubusson Tradition and the Weaving of This Rug

Aubusson is a town in central France whose workshops wove tapestries and flat carpets for the French court from the 17th century onward, and the design language here, the shaped cartouche, the rose garland, the acanthus corners, comes straight out of that 18th century repertoire. This piece was made in China, where the flat tapestry weave has been carried on by workshop weavers for decades and where most of the world's good hand-woven Aubusson work is now produced. The weave is worked on a cotton foundation with wool, color area by color area, which is why the outlines of the medallion and the leaves are so sharp; you can see the technique clearly in the corner detail and along the finished end. Built without a pile, a well made Oriental rug of this construction is light, thin and exceptionally stable underfoot, and it takes furniture legs without crushing.