9'6" x 13'6" Chinese Savonnerie Rug | Ivory Rose Border, Burgundy Field | Hand-Knotted Wool, Excellent Condition

This is a hand-knotted Chinese room-size piece drawn in the French Savonnerie manner, and at 9'6" x 13'6" it falls squarely into the 10x14 rug size that formal living rooms and long dining rooms tend to need. The wool pile is deep and dense, carved very slightly along the outlines so the roses and scrollwork stand away from the ground, and the cotton foundation gives it the weight and lie-flat body you want in a rug this large. Condition is excellent, with full pile edge to edge and clean ivory fringe at both ends. Every rug we ship leaves with a certificate of authenticity confirming that it is genuinely hand-knotted.

Design and Motifs

The drawing follows the classic Savonnerie formula, a European court design worked here in hand-knotted pile. A tall shaped cartouche sits at the center on an ivory ground, framed by a beaded and ribboned surround and filled with a standing bouquet of full-blown roses, buds and small blue florets. That center panel floats on a burgundy inner field covered with dense curling acanthus leafwork and scattered flower sprays. Four oval reserves, one at each side and one at each end, repeat the rose bouquet on ivory, and they are tied together by pale mauve architectural scrollwork, shell forms, plumes and swagged ribbons. The wide outer border is ivory, carrying continuous garlands of roses, carnations and leafy branches, with cornucopia and feather motifs turning each of the 4 corners. Two narrow guard stripes, a dark sawtooth band and a repeating rosette chain on burgundy, close the composition and give the whole rug a framed, almost tapestry-like finish.

A Palette Built on Ivory, Burgundy and Rose

Ivory is the color that carries this rug. It holds the wide border, the center cartouche and the 4 oval reserves, so the eye reads the piece as light overall even though the inner field is a deep burgundy wine. Against that burgundy the acanthus scrolls are worked in dusty rose, mauve and pale taupe, which keeps the field from going heavy. The flowers move through salmon, coral pink, blush and a deeper rose at the heart of each bloom, with leaves in muted sage, olive and slate green rather than a bright botanical green. Small clusters of soft blue appear inside the bouquets as accents, and charcoal to near-black outlining is used sparingly along the scrollwork and in the sawtooth guard stripe to sharpen the drawing. The result is a quiet, powdery palette in the French taste, warm enough for a formal room and pale enough to sit under cream, camel or grey upholstery.

Chinese Weaving of a French Design

Chinese workshops built a serious reputation for this category of work, taking French Savonnerie and Aubusson cartoons and translating them into thick, hand-knotted wool pile rather than flat tapestry weave. It suits the design: the heavier pile lets the weaver carve around the roses and scroll edges so the pattern gains real relief, something a flatweave cannot do. Knot by knot the shading here is handled well, with three and four tones used inside a single rose petal and clean curved outlines through the cartouche frame and the border garlands, which is the hardest part of any curvilinear design. As an Oriental rug made in China to a European pattern, it belongs to a distinct and very collectible group, and this example has survived with its pile height, its fringe and its color intact.