9' x 12'2" Needlepoint Oriental Rug | Tropical Fruit, Bird & Rabbit Garden | Brand New

This 9' x 12'2" piece is a hand-stitched needlepoint in the old verdure tapestry manner, worked stitch by stitch in wool over a cotton canvas rather than knotted with a pile. The surface is flat, dense and almost painterly, which is exactly why collectors of this type of Oriental rug keep coming back to it: the drawing can carry detail that a knotted weave would round off. A dark green garden field is crowded with fruit, blossoms, a long-tailed pheasant and two rabbits, all framed by a wide beige brown border of scrolling foliage. It is brand new and never used, generous in scale for a large living room or dining room, and one of the more interesting pieces we carry in the 9x12 rugs group. Every rug we ship travels with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The field reads as one continuous garden rather than a repeating pattern. At the center sits a lobed cartouche piled with pears, apples and quince, ringed by heavy cream acanthus scrolls that curl out toward the four corners. Around it the drawing loosens into roses, peonies, carnations, tulips, lilies of the valley, strawberry sprigs and small 5 petal blossoms, all growing on leafy stems that reach the very edge of the field. A pheasant with a long banded tail perches on a branch in the upper third, a second smaller bird sits at the left, and along the bottom two rabbits crouch among broad iris blades and morning glory trumpets. The border is a design in its own right: 2 pilaster-like side panels of urns, fruit swags and songbirds, a top and bottom register of drapery, shells and blossoms, and an outer guard of interlaced ribbon work. This is a true all over composition with a formal frame, so it holds up whether you see the whole rug at once or only a corner of it under furniture.

A Deep Forest Green Field Against Beige Brown

The ground is a dark forest green that shifts as it travels: near black olive in the upper field, warming to moss and sage through the leafwork, and cooling to a clear teal blue around the central cartouche and in the shaded petals of the violets. Against that depth the flowers are worked in soft peach, apricot, blush pink, buttermilk and clean ivory, with a few pale yellow fruits catching the light. The border is a quiet beige brown, closer to sand and biscuit, carrying olive and celadon foliage and touches of rust in the drapery. Thin blue guard lines separate the border registers and the outer edge is finished in a muted olive. If you are building a room around green rugs, this is the useful kind of green: dark enough to anchor heavy furniture, warm enough to sit with wood tones, leather and brass without turning cold.

Made in China: The Needlepoint Workshop Tradition

Chinese workshops have produced needlepoint floor coverings in the European verdure and Aubusson manner for generations, and the best of them are genuinely difficult work. Each stitch is placed by hand through a cotton canvas from a painted cartoon, so a rug this size represents many months on the frame for a team of stitchers. The trade-off for the labor is resolution: the shading in a single peony here runs through 4 or 5 tones, the pheasant's tail is drawn feather by feather, and the acanthus scrolls keep a clean curved line that a coarse pile weave simply cannot hold. The result is a low, firm flat weave that lies close to the floor, slides easily under doors and dining chairs, and shows almost no crush underfoot. The back tag marks this piece as rug number 6307. It is new, in perfect condition, and has never been on a floor.