9'9" x 14' Serapi Design Oriental Rug | Antique Reproduction | Hand-Knotted Wool | Made in India

This 9'9" x 14' rug is a new, never used hand-knotted reproduction of the grand old Serapi room-size weavings that collectors chase at auction, and it is drawn with the confidence of a workshop that clearly studied real antique originals rather than a printed catalog page. Everything about it reads generous: a full, heavy wool pile, a soft rust field that breathes with gentle abrash, and a huge stepped star medallion that anchors the whole floor. It falls squarely into the 10 x 14 rug class, which is the size most large living rooms and formal dining rooms actually need, and as a genuine hand-knotted Oriental rug it ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming the hand-knotted construction, wool pile and origin.

Design and Motifs

The center holds an 8 pointed stepped star medallion outlined in near-black indigo, with a plum-brown inner field and an octagonal rosette at the very heart, ringed by a dotted collar of black, ivory and salmon squares. Four cartouche-shaped pendants in soft gold and rust break the medallion's outline, and long serrated palmettes in chartreuse and olive drop away from the top and bottom like open fans. Around it the rust field carries angular vine work, split leaves, small blossoms and stray birds, all drawn in the straight-line village idiom rather than a curvilinear one, which is exactly what gives this geometric medallion rug its antique character. Sky blue spandrels with curling tendrils fill the 4 corners, ivory corner panels sit just inside the border, and the wide indigo main border repeats turtle palmettes and hexagonal rosettes between camel gold guard stripes scattered with pink and blue florets.

A Soft Rust Field Against Indigo and Sky Blue

The field is a soft, slightly brick-toned rust that shifts between warmer and cooler passes of wool, the kind of natural variation that keeps a large floor from looking flat or printed. Against it, the border reads as a deep indigo so dark it is nearly black in low light, and that contrast is what makes the drawing pop from across a room. The secondary palette does the real work: a chalky sky blue in the spandrels and vine work, chartreuse and olive green in the palmettes, camel gold in the guard borders and cartouches, a smoky plum-brown at the medallion center, plus ivory and salmon pink used sparingly as highlights. Under the close-up photographs you can see the wool take light differently from knot to knot, with a faint sheen on the rust that turns coppery near the fringe ends.

Made in India: Weaving and Quality

India is where most of the world's best contemporary hand-knotted work is now made, and this rug is a fair example of why. The pile is hand-knotted wool on a cotton foundation, beaten down firmly enough that the back shows a clean, even knot grid with the design fully legible from the reverse, as the folded corner photograph shows. The wool is full-bodied and lanolin-rich rather than thin, so the pile stands up and will take heavy traffic in a great room or under a dining table without crushing. Selvedges are tight, the ends are finished in cream cotton fringe, and the whole rug lies flat and square. It is brand new and never used, which means the buyer gets the full life of the pile and the chance to watch the colors soften over the next 20 or 30 years.