9' x 12' Chinese Bamboo Silk Rug | French Floral Medallion Design | Brand New, Never Used

This is a hand-knotted room size rug in the French floral manner, worked entirely in bamboo silk over a cotton foundation and finished in perfect, never used condition. At 9' x 12' it covers a full seating group or a 8 seat dining table with chairs pulled out, and the pile catches light the way a true silk pile does: the field reads jet black from one direction and warms to charcoal with a bronze sheen from the other. What sets this piece apart from most machine made French style floors is that every rose, leaf and scroll is tied knot by knot, which is why the curves stay round and the garlands stay legible at close range. It ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming it as a genuine hand-knotted piece, and it is one of the more usable formats in our range of 9 x 12 rugs.

Design and Motifs

The drawing is pure French salon: a lobed central medallion sitting inside a burgundy cartouche, surrounded by cabbage roses, peonies, forget-me-nots and long acanthus leaves that curl outward across the black ground like carved plasterwork. The medallion itself is built in layers, a pale green rosette at the core ringed by blue strapwork, then a wreath of rose blossoms, then a scalloped burgundy frame. Four large spandrels fill the corners with matching bouquets and turn the field into a framed panel. Look closely at the field and small long tailed birds appear among the leaves, tucked in pairs on either side of the medallion and again in the outer border, a detail most buyers only notice after the rug is down. The border system runs three deep: a celadon guard band of rose sprays, a wide burgundy main border carrying scrolling leaves and full blown roses, and a narrow outer stripe in black that squares the whole composition off.

A Black Field Lit by Rose, Ivory and Soft Green

The palette is the reason this rug works in a modern room rather than only a formal one. The ground is a deep, true black with no blue cast, and against it the flowers read in three tones of rose, from a dusty antique pink through coral to a saturated deep red at the medallion. Ivory and cream carry the smaller blossoms and the highlights on the leaf scrolls, so the pattern never goes heavy. The spandrels and the inner border shift to a soft celadon green, cool and slightly grey, which is what keeps the burgundy main border from dominating. Sky blue appears in small quantities, in the tracery at the center of the medallion and scattered through the border flowers, and there are olive and bronze greens in the foliage that change value as you walk around the rug. The bamboo silk pile takes dye brightly and reflects, so the rose tones glow under lamplight and settle to a softer, more antique register in daylight.

Origin and Weaving Quality

This piece was made in China, where workshops have spent decades refining hand-knotted production in fine plant based fibers. Bamboo silk is spun from bamboo cellulose and is prized for its sheen, its softness underfoot and the crispness it gives to small motifs, which is exactly what a French floral design demands: a coarse weave turns roses into blobs, while a fine one holds the petal outlines you can see in the close-up photographs. The knotting here is even across the full 9' x 12', the borders meet cleanly at all 4 corners, and the selvedges and ivory fringe are tight and undisturbed because the rug has never been on a floor. As an Oriental rug with a European design vocabulary, it sits comfortably beside both traditional furniture and contemporary pieces, and it belongs with the better hand-knotted Oriental rugs we carry in this format.