9'3" x 12' India Oriental Rug | Esfahan All-Over Floral Design | Lustrous Wool, Never Used

At 9'3" x 12' this is a genuine room-size piece, hand-knotted in India on a cotton foundation with a lustrous wool pile clipped low enough to read every line of the drawing. The layout follows the classic Esfahan tradition: a dense, mirrored field of vinescroll, palmettes and blossoms on deep burgundy, framed by a cream ivory main border and narrow salmon and olive guard stripes. It is new, never used and in perfect condition, with the original hand woven tag still attached as shown in the last photograph, and it ships with a certificate of authenticity. Anyone shopping 9x12 hand-knotted rugs will notice how fine the knotting stays across a field this large.

Design and Motifs

There is no central medallion here. Instead the weaver used an all-over floral design built on a curved vine armature that repeats in 4 mirrored quarters, so the field reads the same from either end of the room. Large lobed palmettes sit at the center and along the long axis, each one flanked by cupped cream blossoms and split arabesque leaves that curl back on themselves. Between them are boteh paisleys, small 8 petal rosettes, feathered serrated leaves and strings of tiny pin dot flowers that the close-up photographs show clearly. The ivory main border alternates round rosette medallions with upright palmettes joined by a continuous scrolling vine, corners resolved cleanly rather than cut off, which is the mark of a properly drawn cartoon. Two slim inner guards and a wider salmon outer guard step the eye from field to fringe.

Burgundy, Ivory, Green and Brown in Detail

The ground is a deep burgundy that leans almost aubergine in low light and warms to a wine red where the sun crosses it, as in the daylight photographs. Over it the ornament is drawn in camel gold, honey, soft apricot and chocolate brown, with olive and sage green reserved for the leaves and for the fine outlines that separate one element from the next. Cream ivory appears as small highlights inside the blossoms and again as the field of the main border, where brown, rust and dark green rosettes sit against it, with occasional black centers for contrast. Because the palette is built from earth tones rather than bright dyes, the rug behaves as a warm neutral in a room, picking up furniture and wood tones instead of fighting them, while the ivory border keeps the whole thing from going heavy.

Made in India: Weave and Quality

India is where most of the world's best contemporary hand-knotted work is now made, and this piece is a fair example of why. The workshop wove a formal Esfahan cartoon, which demands a curved line and a high knot count to work at all, using strong cotton warps and a well spun, lustrous wool that takes dye deeply and reflects light in the pile. The back shown in the fold photograph is even and tightly packed, the selvages are firm, and the fringe is the warp itself, hand finished rather than sewn on. If you are weighing this against an Oriental rug from another weaving region, the draw here is the combination of fine drawing, a durable low pile and untouched new condition at room size.