9'9" x 13'7" Aubusson Rug | Black Field All-Over Floral | Hand-Knotted Fine Wool, Excellent Condition

This is a hand-knotted Aubusson design rug in the large 9'9" x 13'7" format, worked in fine wool on a cotton foundation and finished in excellent, never used condition. The drawing follows the French Aubusson tradition of painterly flower bouquets and carved scrollwork, but it is knotted pile rather than flat tapestry, so the surface has real depth and the ivory blossoms sit up off the black ground. What separates this piece from decorator reproductions is the shading: each petal and leaf is built from three or four tones of wool, which is slow, expensive weaving. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity, and buyers looking at this scale will find it sits naturally alongside our other 10x14 rugs.

Design and Motifs

The composition is built in two layers. A slim ivory frame sits inside the field and encloses a central panel filled with loose bouquets, ribbon bows, tulips, peonies, hydrangea clusters and grape bunches, all connected by curling acanthus leaves. Outside that frame the same all-over floral vocabulary continues at a larger scale, punctuated at the 4 corners by big carved cornucopia scrolls strung with beaded rope, and at the middle of each long side by an ivory cartouche holding a single rosette. The main border is a narrow taupe brown band of alternating acanthus leaves and drop buds, edged with a twisted gold rope guard and framed in plain black. There is no medallion, which is deliberate in Aubusson drawing: the eye is meant to wander across the bouquets the way it would across an 18th century painted panel.

A Black Ground With Ivory, Gold and Sage

The field is a true deep black, not charcoal and not navy read as black, and it is held perfectly even across both the inner panel and the outer field. Against it the flowers run through a warm neutral range: cream and chalk ivory at the highlights, soft butter gold and antique honey in the open blossoms, and faded apricot or dusty rose at the centers of a few roses. The foliage is worked in sage, olive and a smoky blue green that keeps the greenery quiet rather than bright. The border band is a muted taupe brown with soft rose undertones, and the rope guard stripe picks up the same gold as the bouquets. Because almost every accent color is a neutral, this rug reads dramatic from across the room and surprisingly easy to live with up close, and it works with warm wood floors, brass, and both cream and deeper jewel toned upholstery. See it against the parquet in the room photos for an accurate sense of the tone.

Weaving Quality and Origin

This piece was hand-knotted in China, where workshops have specialized in European Aubusson and Savonnerie drawing for decades and where the closed loom pile technique is executed to a very high standard. The reverse tells the story: a clean, tight knot grid on a cotton warp, crisp color changes with no bleeding, and a flat, square handle with no drawn-in edges across nearly 14 feet of length. The pile is fine wool, clipped low enough to hold the fine detail in the scrollwork and the shaded petals, and it has the slight sheen good wool develops under a careful shear. Selvedges are firm and the cotton fringe is full and undamaged. As an Oriental rug with European design roots, it belongs to a category collectors often overlook, and a piece this large in this condition is uncommon.