9' x 12' Oriental Rug | French Savonnerie Floral Design on Black | New, Never Used

French court carpet drawing translated into a hand-knotted wool weave is a difficult thing to pull off, and this 9' x 12' piece does it with real confidence. The weavers took the Savonnerie vocabulary of loose garden bouquets, scrolling acanthus and cornucopia horns, then set all of it against a jet black ground so every petal reads like it is lit from the front. The pile is fine wool on a cotton foundation, cut low enough that the shading stays crisp, and the rug has never been on a floor: it is new, perfect and still carries its full pile and original cream cotton fringe. It is an Oriental rug in the strict sense of the term, hand-knotted one knot at a time, and every rug we ship leaves with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

There is no central medallion here. Instead the field is divided by a slim ivory and coral panel line into an inner rectangle and a wide outer frame, a device borrowed straight from 18th century French floor carpets. Inside the panel, bouquets of roses, lilies, tulips and hydrangea clusters drift across the black ground with ribbons and curling leaves linking them, and a row of upright tulip cups on small pedestals marches along the inner edge at both ends. The outer frame is where the drawing turns theatrical: 4 corners carry large cornucopia horns spilling flowers, flanked by heavy acanthus scrolls, while the midpoint of each side holds an oval cartouche wreathed in scrollwork with a flower cluster at its center. Baskets of blossoms fill the long sides. The whole composition is closed by a narrow mahogany band of leaf palmettes set between twisted rope guard stripes, visible clearly in the corner and border close-ups.

A Black Ground Lit by Coral, Apricot and Sage

The ground is a true deep black with no blue cast, and it does the work of a dark gallery wall: everything placed on it gains contrast. The flowers run through a warm coral family, starting at pale peach and cream in the highlights, moving through apricot and salmon in the petal bodies, and deepening to rust orange and terracotta in the shadowed buds. Each blossom is shaded across 4 or 5 tones, which is why the roses appear to have volume rather than sitting flat. Foliage is handled in muted sage and grey green with olive and charcoal shadows, a restrained choice that keeps the palette warm overall. The cornucopias and large scrolls are worked in golden tan and soft brown with ivory edging, and the outer border band shifts to a deep mahogany brown that frames the black without competing with it. The cotton fringe at both ends is a clean ivory.

Woven in Pakistan to a Fine Standard

Pakistan is one of the few places still weaving European floor carpet designs entirely by hand at this level, and the workshops there have built their reputation on exactly this kind of work: dense knotting on a cotton foundation, good spun wool, and the patience required for curved line drawing. A pattern like this is unforgiving, because a Savonnerie scroll only looks right if the knot count is high enough to turn a smooth curve, and the folded corner and rolled pile photos show a tight, even back and a level clip across the surface. At 9' x 12' it is a full room size piece that will sit under a dining table with the chairs still on the rug, or anchor a seating group with the sofa front legs on the border. Buyers comparing other 9x12 rugs will find few dark ground florals drawn this cleanly, and it stands among the more decorative pieces in our hand-knotted Oriental rugs.