9'5" x 13'6" Oriental Rug | Navy Blue Floral Field, Gold Medallion | Hand-Knotted Wool

This is a large, formally drawn, hand-knotted Oriental rug in a deep navy blue, measuring 9'5" x 13'6" and built on a cotton foundation with a wool pile. The composition is classical: a dense, flowering vine field surrounding a wide gold and rust medallion, framed by a broad rust border of curling acanthus leaves and closed with a navy floral outer guard. At 113" x 162" it is a true room-size piece that fills a formal living room or a long dining room without crowding the walls, and it sits comfortably in the same footprint as most 10 x 14 rugs. The pile is even, the fringes are clean and original, and the rug ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming that it is 100% hand-knotted.

Design and Motifs

The field is an all-over flowering vine, drawn with real freedom: serrated leaves, small 5 petal blossoms, buds and tendrils run edge to edge in a continuous trellis rather than a repeating stamp, so the eye never lands on an obvious repeat. At the center sits a broad, softly lobed medallion in gold, ringed by scrolling red cartouche forms and paired acanthus curls that read almost like a Baroque wreath. Inside the medallion the drawing goes quiet, with a small navy rosette and a scatter of sprigs on an open gold ground, which is exactly what gives the design its sense of depth. The same gold and red pairing returns as pendant palmettes at the top and bottom of the field and again in the 4 corner spandrels. The main border carries a bold, large-scale acanthus scroll on rust, unusual for its size and confidence, and it is bracketed by narrow navy guard stripes of small connected flowers that tighten the whole frame.

A Study in Navy, Gold and Rust

The ground is a deep, inky navy blue that photographs almost black in shadow and opens up to a true midnight blue in daylight, as the corner and close-up views show. Against it the palette is warm and limited: an antique gold that runs from honey to soft wheat through the medallion and spandrels, a brick rust red in the border and cartouche work, and ivory to pale cream in the smaller blossoms and in the fringe. Sage and olive greens carry the leaves and give the vine its cool counterweight, while scattered coral and salmon buds lift the field where the drawing is densest. The gold has the slight tonal variation of hand-dyed wool, most visible across the open center of the medallion, which is a mark of natural color movement in a handmade piece rather than a flaw. Overall the rug reads dark and formal from a distance and surprisingly warm up close.

Origin and Weaving Quality

This rug was hand-knotted in China, where workshops have long woven in the classical floral idiom for the export market, and the better ones do it with a discipline you can read in the back of the piece. The knotting is regular, the rows are straight, and the curved line of the medallion and acanthus scrolls holds its shape all the way around, which takes both a good cartoon and a weaver who can follow it. The foundation is cotton, which keeps a rug of this width flat and stable, and the wool pile has been clipped to a medium height that shows the drawing crisply without sacrificing durability underfoot. The back photograph shows the ivory warp ends knotted into a plain, undyed fringe and the selvage bound tight along the navy edge. Among large hand-knotted Oriental rugs in this size, the combination of a dark ground, an ambitious border and clean condition is what makes this one worth a close look.