8' x 8' Indian Transitional Round Rug | Wool with Silk Highlights | Black and Beige

A round rug measuring Width: 8' x Length: 8', hand-knotted in India in wool with silk highlights. The field is black, carrying a loose all-over tracery of vines, serrated leaves and open flowerheads, and it is ringed by a wide beige border that lifts the whole circle at a glance. At eight feet across it covers a round dining table with chairs pulled back, or fills a square entry without touching the walls.

Design

The transitional drawing keeps the vocabulary of a classical floral rug but spaces it out. Thin stems wander across the field rather than repeating on a strict lattice, and they carry palmettes, small rosettes and long feathered leaves that curl back on themselves. Two larger sunflower-type blossoms sit opposite one another near the edge of the field, which is the only concession to symmetry on an otherwise freely drawn ground. The border runs a single main band of linked palmettes and cartouches alternating with turned leaves, flanked by narrow guard stripes of running vine, and a dark outline separates border from field all the way round.

Colour

The ground is a true black, deep enough in the close views that the pile reads almost matte, and every other colour here is set against it. The vine work is drawn in ivory and a soft gold, with olive and sage green filling the leaves and a rust brown picking out the smaller buds and the hearts of the larger blossoms. The border ground is a warm beige with a faint green cast where the light catches it, and the brick red and olive of its flowers repeat the field palette at lower contrast, so the eye moves from dark centre to pale rim without a hard break.

Making

Hand-knotted in India on a cotton foundation, with a wool pile and silk highlights that catch the light on the leaves and stems, visible in the close photographs where certain motifs sit brighter than the wool around them (the same effect that puts this rug in our silk selection). The reverse shows the knotting following the curve of the circle, with the ends finished in short knotted fringe. The rug is new and in perfect condition. Other pieces of this kind sit in our full catalogue.