9'3" x 13'1" Indian Jaipur Rug | All Over Floral Field | Deep Red with Black Border | Never Used

This 9'3" x 13'1" Jaipur rug is a hand-knotted wool piece from Jaipur in the Indian state of Rajasthan, woven on a cotton foundation with a 3/8" clipped pile that still has its original factory nap. It has never been on a floor: the fringe is untouched, the selvedges are tight and square, and the pile stands up evenly across all 121 square feet. The drawing is a dense all over floral on a deep red ground, wrapped in a black main border and twin pistachio guard stripes, which is the classic formula buyers look for in an Oriental rug built for a formal room. Every rug we ship leaves Freeport with a certificate of authenticity recording size, origin, materials and construction.

Design and Motifs

There is no medallion here. The field is an all over floral composition built from thin scrolling vines that loop into rounded cartouches, each one holding a flat open rosette or a many petalled blossom. Between them sit split leaves, serrated palmettes, small tulips and striped bud forms, drawn loosely enough that the eye never finds a hard repeat, which is why a 9x13 of this type reads as continuous rather than tiled. The black main border runs a bold wave of large palmettes and curling acanthus leaves, alternated with pine cone shaped buds, and it is separated from the field by two narrow pistachio guard bands carrying a quieter rose and vine chain. The corners are resolved properly, with the border vine turning cleanly instead of being cut, a detail you can see in the close corner photograph. Compare the border scale to the field motifs and you can see the weaver was working to a cartoon drawn for a room of exactly this scale, which is what makes it sit comfortably among large rugs rather than looking like a small design stretched out.

Deep Red, Black and the Soft Pastel Palette

The ground is a deep saturated red, closer to a true crimson than to brick, and it shifts noticeably with the nap: lit from one direction it goes almost claret, from the other it brightens toward cherry. Against that, every flower is worked in a soft pastel register, which is what gives the rug its depth. You see butter gold and antique ivory in the big rosettes, powder pink and dusty rose in the open blossoms, lavender and mauve in the smaller buds, cinnamon and terracotta in the striped forms, and olive to sage green in the leaves and stems, with fine black outlining that keeps every element crisp. The main border is a true black, almost inky, and it anchors the whole piece while making the salmon and pistachio drawing on top of it glow. Those twin green guard stripes are the most unusual color decision in the rug: a light pistachio that bridges the red field and the black border instead of letting them collide. If you are shopping the broader group of red and burgundy rugs, this one is on the warmer, more jewel toned end rather than the rust end.

Jaipur Weaving and the Quality of the Knot

Jaipur has been the center of fine hand-knotted weaving in Rajasthan for generations, and India is where most of the world's good contemporary hand-knotted work is now made. The looms there are set up for exactly this kind of job: a finely drawn floral cartoon that demands curved line, a high color count and a clean border turn, all held on a stable cotton warp and weft. Turn this rug over and the back is tight and legible, with the pattern reading clearly through the weave and no looseness at the edges, which is the first thing to check on any hand-knotted piece. The wool is good quality with a glossy surface, and at 3/8" the pile is clipped low enough to hold the fine detail of the vines yet deep enough to feel plush underfoot in the macro photographs. No knot count was recorded for this piece, so we make no claim on it, but the fineness of the small buds and the thin vine lines tell you more than a number would. Woven new and never put down, it arrives with its full pile and its full life ahead of it.