9' x 12'3" Indian Lavar Rug | Wool | Ivory and Honey

A 9' x 12'3" carpet knotted in India, with a wool pile and a Lavar design, the fine all-over floral drawing associated with the Kerman weavers of southern Persia. The field is ivory and covered edge to edge with palmettes, rosettes and long serrated leaves; the main border is a wide band of honey gold. It is a rectangular room-size piece with a short, even pile and cream fringe at both ends.

Design

There is no medallion. The field runs as a continuous lattice of vine, with the pattern mirrored on both the long and short axes, so the same cusped palmette that rises up the centre line appears again reversed at the far end. Large sunflower rosettes, some a hand's width across, sit at the corners of the repeat, and between them are smaller eight-petal rosettes, tulip buds and curling saz leaves with toothed edges. The border carries alternating ivory-ground cartouches with a flame-shaped bud inside, separated by broad leaf forms and small birds in the honey ground, as seen plainly in the close view of the end border. Narrow guard stripes of cream quatrefoils on a dusty rose ground frame the border on both sides.

Colour

The field is ivory, slightly warm rather than chalk white, and most of the drawing sits on it in honey and old gold. The deeper notes are a dark army brown that shades the serrated leaves and the outer petals of the large rosettes, and a muted madder red that fills the central palmettes and the smaller flower heads. Rose-mauve and a soft grey-green appear in the lesser leaves and in the border cartouches, and cream outlining separates almost every motif from its neighbour, which keeps the close drawing legible rather than crowded. Against the ivory ground the honey border reads as the strongest block of colour on the rug.

Making

Hand-knotted in wool, one of the Indian floral carpets we carry alongside our other hand-knotted rugs. The wool pile is clipped low, which is why the fine outlining in the palmettes holds its shape, and the weave is regular enough that the mirrored pattern lines up across the full twelve-foot length. The rug is new and in perfect condition, with full pile, intact selvedges and both fringes unworn.