9'10" x 9'11" Round Indian Rug | Ivory & Dark Green Floral Medallion | Fine Dense Wool

A true circle at 9'10" x 9'11", this hand-knotted wool rug is one of the harder things to weave well: a round loom gives the weaver no straight edges to hide behind, and every ring of pattern has to close perfectly or the whole field goes crooked. This one closes. The ivory ground carries a radiating floral composition out to a deep forest green border, the pile is fine and dense underfoot, and the cotton foundation shown in the reverse photo is even and tight from edge to edge. It has never been used and leaves us in perfect condition with a certificate of authenticity confirming it as a genuine hand-knotted piece. Large true rounds in the 10 foot class are uncommon, and this one is sized to sit under a round dining table or to anchor a circular foyer. Browse more round hand-knotted rugs if you are comparing diameters.

Design and Motifs

The drawing is built outward from a single point. At the center sits a compact rosette medallion, a dark core ringed by layered blossoms and enclosed in a circular cartouche of fine vine work. Around it the field opens into concentric rings of pattern: first a wreath of small floral roundels, then a wider ring of diamond shaped panels alternating with bouquets and curling leaf sprays, then a third ring of larger blossom clusters. Between the rings the ivory ground is filled with detached flower heads, buds and feathery stems, so there is no dead space anywhere in the composition. Long serrated leaves push inward from the border like rays, which is what gives the rug its starburst effect when you look at it from above. The border is the other half of the story: a broad band of scrolling paisley cartouches, palmettes and flowering vines drawn on a solid dark ground, edged by a narrow ivory guard stripe and finished with hand-tied cotton fringe all the way around the circle.

A Soft Ivory Ground Against Deep Forest Green

The field is a warm ivory, closer to unbleached cream than to stark white, which keeps the rug from reading cold in a room with pale walls. Against it the palette runs warm and slightly antique: maroon and wine red in the flower heads, soft rose and dusty pink where the petals lighten, terracotta rust in the larger palmettes, chocolate brown and olive in the leaves, with pale blue and grey used sparingly as a cooling accent inside a few of the rosettes. Every motif is outlined in a near black charcoal, which is what makes the drawing read so crisply at a distance. The border is the deepest note in the rug, a dark forest green that photographs almost black in low light but shows clear green tones in daylight, and the same green reappears in the leafwork across the field so the two zones stay tied together. Wool this dense takes dye evenly, and the color is consistent from the center out to the selvage.

Made in India: Contemporary Hand-Knotted Quality

India is where most of the world's good contemporary hand-knotted weaving now happens, and the workshops around Jaipur in particular have built their reputation on exactly this kind of traditional floral drawing executed at a high knot count on a cotton foundation. Nothing here is machine assisted: each knot is tied by hand, row by row, and on a circular loom the weaver has to shorten or lengthen every row to hold the curve, which is slow, skilled work that a power loom simply cannot imitate. The reverse photograph shows the result, a fine even grid with the pattern legible from the back, which is the standard test of an Oriental rug worth owning. The pile is trimmed low and packed tight, so the rug lies flat, resists crushing under furniture legs and will take years of traffic in a dining room or entry without the pattern blurring.