8' x 10' Indian Ziegler Rug | Wool | Gold and Burgundy

An 8' x 10' rug knotted in India with a natural wool pile, worked in the Ziegler manner: a pale gold field covered edge to edge in thin vine scrolls, held inside a wide crimson border. Seen from above it reads light and open in the centre, with the weight of the colour pushed out to the frame.

Design

The vines on the field curve round on themselves to make large ovals, and the ovals repeat across the full width in offset rows. Inside most of them sits a fan-shaped palmette, red at the tips with a small pale blue heart at the base; where the ovals meet, larger rosette medallions in old gold and olive take their place, each one built from rounded petals around a small central star. Small dark navy lozenges punctuate the pattern at regular intervals, and a scatter of serrated leaves and buds fills the ground between. The main border runs a continuous meander of broad serrated leaves, eight-petalled white rosettes and gold palmettes, with a narrow ivory guard stripe either side carrying small red blossoms and a thin olive line at the outer edge. The rug is rectangular, with plain ivory fringes at both ends.

Colour

The field is a light straw gold that lifts almost to ivory where the pile lies away from the light, and the drawing on it is done in a dry madder red rather than a heavy one, so the vines read as fine lines rather than blocks. Against that, the border is a saturated burgundy that carries the eye straight to the edge. Olive green does most of the mediating work, in the leaves and in the rosette petals, and small passages of dark navy sit in the lozenges and in the border leaves, cold enough to sharpen the reds around them. Pale blue and cream appear in the palmette hearts and the border flowers.

Making

Hand-knotted, with a pile of quality natural wool on a cotton-coloured foundation visible at the fringe. The close-up photographs show a clean, even surface with the knot nodes legible in the shallow pile, and the folded corner shows the pattern reading clearly through to the reverse. The table records the rug as new and in perfect condition.