9' x 12'2" Agra Zigler Rug | Ivory Field with Burgundy Floral Border | Hand-Knotted Wool, Brand New

This is a brand new, never used Agra rug in the Zigler drawing, hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation and measuring 9' x 12'2". The proportions are the workhorse of American rooms, which is why 9x12 hand-knotted rugs sell faster than any other format we carry: the ivory field carries under a sofa group or a 8 seat dining table without the pattern disappearing under furniture. The pile is cut at a medium height, dense enough to feel substantial underfoot but low enough that the fine outlining in the flowers stays crisp, as the close-up photographs show. Every rug we ship leaves Freeport with a certificate of authenticity recording the size, materials, weave and origin.

Design and Motifs

The field is an all over floral design rather than a medallion layout, so there is no single center point to align a coffee table with. Slender tan vines run corner to corner in a lattice, and at each junction sits a large open rosette or a lobed palmette, drawn wide with 10 to 12 petals and filled with 4 or 5 separate shades. Between the big blossoms the weavers dropped in smaller ornaments: serrated sickle leaves, budding lily sprays, tiny 4 petal florets and stylized cypress tufts at the 4 corners of the field. The main border repeats an alternating rhythm of a frontal rosette and a scrolling cartouche palmette, and it is framed on both sides by a narrow ivory guard stripe carrying a running chain of 6 petal daisies, a detail visible clearly in the corner photographs. Nothing in the drawing is mechanical; the motifs shift slightly in size and color from repeat to repeat, which is how you read a hand-knotted piece.

Ivory Ground, Burgundy Border and Sage Accents

The ground is a warm ivory, closer to unbleached cream than to stark white, with the faint natural striation of undyed wool running across it. Against that, the wide main border reads as a warm burgundy, a soft wine red with a brown undertone rather than a bright fire red, and it deepens at the edges where the pile lies over. Sage green is the third voice, used for leaf blades and for the outer petals of the border rosettes, and it cools the whole palette down. Working through the flowers you also find camel and antique gold, a muted teal blue in the flower hearts, apricot and rust in the small buds, soft lilac in the leaf shading and fine black outlining that gives every motif its edge. The guard stripes are a pale sand that sits between the ivory field and the burgundy border and keeps the two from colliding. It is a quiet, layered color story: warm neutrals in the middle, a strong red frame, and small clear accents you only notice standing over the rug.

Woven in India: Agra Weaving and the Zigler Style

Agra has been a weaving city since the Mughal court workshops, and it remains one of the places where a serious hand-knotted Oriental rug is still made properly: hand-spun wool, a cotton warp and weft, and knots tied one at a time on an upright loom. India today produces most of the world's good contemporary hand-knotted work, and this piece shows why. The Zigler drawing, named for the 19th century firm that adapted classical Sultanabad patterning for Western rooms, is the reason the scale here is generous and the palette restrained. Look at the reverse in the fold photographs and you can see the knot rows lying straight and even, the pattern reading as clearly from the back as from the front, with a tight ivory selvage and a hand-finished fringe at both ends. Wool of this grade takes a light sheen with use and this rug, being new, still has its full pile height and years of wear ahead of it.