9' x 12' Chinese Aubusson Rug | Ivory & Black Oval Medallion Flat Weave | Never Used

This 9' x 12' Aubusson is a flat weave, not a pile rug, and that is the first thing you notice when you stand over it: the surface is smooth and low, more like a heavy woven tapestry laid on the floor than a carpeted one. The drawing is pure 18th century French salon, an oval black medallion floating on an open ivory ground, four corner quadrants of scrolling acanthus, and a deep black frame carrying rose pink blossoms and cream leafwork. It is a recent piece that has never been walked on, so the ivory is still bright and the black is still dense and even. As an Oriental rug in the most useful room size there is, it sits squarely among our 9x12 area rugs, and it ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming it is genuinely hand woven.

Design and Motifs

The center is an upright oval medallion on a black ground, ringed with curling leaf forms, small 8 petal rosettes and ribbon loops that repeat in perfect mirror above and below. Inside it sits a pale cream roundel with a single rose at its heart, outlined by a thin pink line that keeps the whole medallion from disappearing into the dark ground. Around it the ivory field is left largely open, broken only by faint drawn cartouche lines and scattered sprays of roses, buds and trailing ribbon. The 4 corners are where the design does its heavy work: each one holds a huge coiled acanthus scroll spilling out of the black frame into the field, and the midpoints of all 4 sides carry a fan of feathered leaves and a cluster of open blossoms. Outside the black band runs a sage guard border of overlapping laurel ovals, and the rug finishes on a plain black outer edge that acts like a picture frame.

Ivory, Black and Rose: Reading the Palette

The field is a warm ivory with a faint cream and oatmeal shift across the weave, the kind of soft variation you only get from hand dyed wool worked in a tapestry technique. Against it, the black is the anchor, a true dense charcoal black with no blue cast, used for the medallion ground and the wide border so the ivory reads as light rather than empty. The flowers are the color story: dusty rose and blush pink in the large acanthus fans, deeper old rose in the shadowed leaf tips, and pale peach and apricot in the smaller buds. Sage and olive green appear in the small leaves and in the ground of the outer laurel band, which stops the rug from being a two tone graphic. Soft gold and honey tones outline the scrollwork and the guard stripes. It is a quiet, pale palette overall, ivory and black reading first from across the room and the pinks and greens only revealing themselves up close.

Aubusson Weaving and the Quality of This Piece

Aubusson is a town in central France whose weavers built their reputation on flat tapestry floor coverings for the salons of the 17th and 18th centuries, all scrolled acanthus, rosettes and open pastel grounds. That tradition is now carried on by the flat weave workshops of China, which have the loom width and the hand skill to weave a 9' x 12' panel in one piece with clean curves and no pile to hide behind. That matters, because a flat weave shows every line: there is no depth of wool to soften a wobbly outline, so the drawing has to be right the first time. On this rug the oval holds true, the mirrored halves of the medallion match, the color transitions are tight, and the selvages and black outer band are straight and firm. The wool is tightly beaten, giving a thin, strong, low profile rug that slides under doors and dining chairs and lies dead flat.