9' x 12' Chinese Aubusson Rug | French Floral Medallion Flat Weave | Never Used

This is a hand-woven flat weave in the French Aubusson manner, 9' x 12' of wool laid down as a smooth tapestry surface with no pile at all. The whole piece reads like a woven painting: a deep pom burgundy red field, an ivory border running with open roses, and a pale oval medallion floating at the center inside a double ring of blossom garlands. Because there is no pile to crush, the drawing stays crisp and the rug sits almost flush with the floor, which is why this format has always been the choice under dining tables, in entries and in formal rooms where doors and chair legs need clearance. It is recent work and has never been used, with clean selvages and full, even weft throughout. Among 9 x 12 area rugs a true flat weave of this weight and scale is uncommon. Every rug we ship carries a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The layout follows the classic 18th century French scheme. At the center sits an ivory oval medallion filled with a radiating burst of golden acanthus leaves, small 5 petal white flowers and pink tulip buds, ringed by a band of tiny rosettes. Around it run two concentric garlands: an inner wreath of full roses and an outer ring of trailing white blossoms on a thin vine. Each of the 4 corners of the field carries a large spray of lilies, roses and scrolling acanthus tied with ribbon work, drawn in a way that gives the burgundy ground plenty of open space to breathe. Along the middle of each side a laurel wreath rises from a small medallion rosette, and a slender flowering vine frames the field like a drawn line. The ivory outer border is an unbroken procession of open roses and buds on leafy stems, punctuated at the corners and side centers by a small diamond or square cartouche holding a single flower. A narrow apricot guard stripe separates the border from a plain burgundy outer edge.

A Burgundy Field with Ivory, Rose and Soft Green

The field is a deep pom burgundy red, closer to claret than to tomato, and it holds a single even tone right across all 12 feet with only the gentle shimmer that flat woven wool gives when the light crosses it. Against that ground the palette is deliberately soft: ivory and warm cream for the border field and the medallion, chalk white for the small blossoms, and a range of pinks that runs from powder to dusty rose to a deeper raspberry in the shaded petals. Foliage is worked in sage and olive green with touches of moss, never bright, so the leaves settle back and let the flowers come forward. Golden apricot and a light ochre outline the vines, the guard stripes and the acanthus scrolls, tying the border to the field. The center medallion adds the warmest note in the rug, a fan of honey and caramel leaves around a small cluster of white flowers. In a room this reads as a rich red floor anchor with cream and blush lifting it, and it sits comfortably with mahogany, gilt, cherry and warm painted woodwork.

Aubusson Weaving and the Workshops of China

Aubusson is a town in central France whose workshops wove pileless tapestry floor coverings for the aristocracy from the 17th century onward, a flat structure where the colored weft is packed across a cotton warp so tightly that the pattern is built rather than clipped. This rug was made in China, where that French tradition has been kept alive by workshops with generations of tapestry experience and where most of today's finest reproduction Aubusson work is now woven. The craft here is in the color blending: soft shading from petal to petal, curved outlines held without jagging, and hundreds of yarn changes per row, all done by hand from a cartoon. The result is reversible, dense and surprisingly durable for its thinness, and being an Oriental rug in the broad sense rather than a knotted pile piece, it brings a formal European look to a room without adding height. Turned over, the back shows the same clean drawing as the face, which is the quickest test of honest tapestry weaving.