9'3" x 11'10" French Design Rug | Rose Bouquets on Black | Wool Pile, Made in India | Never Used

This is a French salon floor translated into hand-knotted wool: a deep black inner field packed with roses, morning glories and cornflowers, held inside a wide ivory and gold surround that carries the same bouquets in a softer key. It is a new piece, never walked on, with the pile still standing full and the ivory ends and fringe clean. At 9'3" x 11'10" it sits in the most useful of the 9x12 rug sizes, large enough to carry a full seating group or a 10 seat table with chairs pulled back. Every rug we ship leaves with a certificate of authenticity confirming it is genuinely hand-knotted, along with its origin, materials and measurements.

Design and Motifs

The drawing is built in three concentric frames, the way French floor designs of the 18th century were composed. At dead center sits a small ivory and gold scroll rosette, drawn with curled acanthus arms rather than a Persianate medallion, and around it the black field opens into full blown cabbage roses, trumpet flowers, buds, ferns and long serrated leaves, all mirrored across both axes so the two halves answer each other exactly. A narrow rosette chain and a dark hairline separate the field from the ivory main border, where the same bouquets grow larger and are draped over shaded ribbon and shell scrolls at the midpoints of each side. Four square corner panels are woven as flat carved-looking tiles of gold leafwork, and the outermost band runs a continuous arcade of palmettes and husks in two tones of gold. The shading is what sells the design: petals are graded through four or five values so the roses genuinely turn in the light, and the scrollwork is carved with relief shading rather than outlined.

A Black Field Under Ivory and Antique Gold

The field ground is a true black, visible in the gaps between leaves and behind the bouquets, and it does the job of making every other color read brighter. The roses run from a deep dusty rose through mid pink to a pale cream at the outer petals, with small wine-red buds scattered between them. Foliage is worked in at least three greens, a dark forest green for the shadowed leaves, a mid olive for the stems and a yellow-green for the highlights. Blue appears twice, as a soft cornflower blue in the small clustered blossoms and as a paler powder blue in the rosette chain that borders the field. Everything outside the field is ivory and antique gold: a warm cream ground for the main border, camel and honey tones for the palmette arcade, and pale grey-blue centers in the little rosette medallions. The fringe and the flat woven ends are clean ivory. Overall the rug reads warm and light from a distance, then resolves into a dark, saturated floral panel as you walk up to it.

Hand-Knotted in India

India is where most of the world's best contemporary hand-knotted work is now produced, and this piece is a fair example of why. A curvilinear French design with this much shading needs a weaver who can change color every few knots and a workshop that keeps the drawing symmetrical across nearly 12 feet, and the corners here resolve cleanly, which is the first thing a dealer checks. The wool is dense and springy with a good lanolin sheen, knotted on a cotton foundation, and the pile has been clipped low enough for the carved scrollwork in the border to hold its edge. If you are weighing this against a traditional piece from Persia or Turkey, our guide to what separates a Persian from an Oriental rug is worth five minutes before you buy.