9'2" x 12'2" Chinese Savonnerie Rug | Black Field with Rose Medallion and Acanthus Scrolls | Excellent Condition

This is a hand-knotted Savonnerie made in China, a full 9x12 room size measured at 9'2" x 12'2", woven in wool on a cotton foundation and finished with hand-tied cotton fringe at both ends. The drawing is unmistakably French in origin, a round rose medallion floating on a deep black ground with acanthus scrollwork sweeping through all 4 corners, but the knotting is Chinese workshop work: even, tightly packed, and clipped so the pile is low enough to read every petal. The pile stands full with no bare areas, the ends and sides are intact, and the colors are strong throughout, which is why the condition is graded Excellent. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming it is hand-knotted, along with its origin, materials and measurements.

Design and Motifs

The center is built as a series of concentric rings: a full-blown rose cluster at the core, then a band of small blossoms, then a ring of C-scrolls and reversed scrolls, and finally a fine cusped ring that closes the medallion like a plaster ceiling rose. Above and below it, loose sprays of leaf and flower drift over open black ground, and the 4 corners carry heavy acanthus leaves curling around large rosettes drawn in shaded tan and brown so they appear to lift off the surface. Small circular cartouches set at the middle of each side and at the top and bottom of the field hold a crown motif, a direct nod to the court furnishings this pattern was first drawn for. The border system is quiet by comparison: a leaf-and-stem guard running like a laurel garland, then a main band of scalloped arcades with a single rosette in each arch, and an outer beaded stripe that frames the whole piece.

A Black Field Shaded in Rust, Brown and Ivory

The field reads as a true deep black, dense and matte, with none of the charcoal cast that flattens a dark rug. Against it the ornament is worked in a graduated rust-to-brown palette: warm rust and terracotta at the heart of the flowers, mid-brown in the shadowed leaf edges, camel and soft tan through the body of the acanthus, and near-ivory on the highlights that catch the light along each curl. That shading is what makes the pattern legible; the weavers used at least 4 tonal steps within the same color family instead of outlining everything in one flat shade. The guard stripes pick up a pale beige that separates the field from the border cleanly, and the ivory fringe repeats it at both ends. In a room with light oak or pale stone floors, as shown in the photographs, the black ground anchors the furniture and the rust and brown work warms it back up.

Chinese Weaving in the Savonnerie Tradition

Savonnerie was the pile-weaving manufactory of the French crown, and its patterns, medallions, acanthus, crowns and garlands, became the standard vocabulary for grand European floor coverings. Chinese workshops took that vocabulary up on the hand-knotted loom and built a specialty out of it, using firm wool, a cotton warp and weft, and a closely clipped pile that suits the fine curved drawing far better than a shaggy surface would. The back photograph shows the result plainly: straight, regular knot rows, tight selvedges and a clean grid with no slack or uneven packing. That is the hallmark of a well-supervised workshop piece, and it is what separates this kind of Oriental rug from a machine-made copy of the same pattern.