9' x 18' Oversize Indian Oriental Rug | Olive Brown Antique All-Over Design | Wool Pile, Never Used

This is a long room piece, hand-knotted in India on a cotton foundation with a full wool pile and finished in a warm olive brown that carries a good deal of camel and gold in it. The drawing is an antique style all-over composition with no central medallion, so the pattern runs the full 18 foot length as one continuous field, which is exactly what you want in a room this shape. It has never been on a floor, the pile is untouched, the ends and sides are clean and tight, and the rug ships with a certificate of authenticity. At 9 feet wide it works with the largest pieces we stock, so if you are shopping our oversize rugs for a great room, a long dining hall or a conference space, this one covers ground that almost nothing else in a hand-knotted weave will.

Design and Motifs

The field is a classic antique style all-over design, built on staggered rows that repeat down the length. Large shield palmettes outlined in serrated ivory alternate with lobed diamond medallion motifs, and between them sit curved boteh leaves filled with burgundy blossoms, small 8 petal rosettes, fan shaped ivory palmettes and paired leaf sprays on thin vine stems. Because the repeat is offset rather than mirrored on a single axis, the eye keeps moving along the rug instead of stopping at one point. The border system is a triple arrangement: a wide main band on a lighter camel ground carrying apricot diamond cartouches, dark green rosette medallions and hooked vine scrolls, framed on both sides by narrow guard stripes of meandering leaf and blossom outlined in brown. The 4 corners are resolved cleanly, which on a rug this long is a real test of the weaver's cartoon discipline.

Olive Brown, Burgundy and Forest Green in Detail

The ground is an olive brown that behaves differently depending on where you stand. Against the nap it reads deeper and more bronze, with the nap it lifts into camel and dry gold, and that natural directional shift is what keeps a field this size from looking flat. Drawn over it are deep burgundy blossoms, a dark forest green used for outlines, rosette centers and leaf bodies, and a soft rust to apricot that appears in the palmette hearts and the border cartouches. Ivory does the lifting work: serrated palmette outlines, small 4 petal stars and fan motifs pop against the olive and give the field its rhythm. Chocolate brown handles the fine outlines and the vine tracery. The borders run a shade lighter than the field, which frames the composition without introducing a hard contrast line, and the cotton fringe at both ends is clean ivory.

Woven in India: Origin and Quality

India is where most of the world's good contemporary hand-knotted work is now made, and we say that with confidence. The weaving centers there have spent decades reproducing classical antique cartoons on real cotton warps with real wool pile, and the best of that output, like this piece, is honest hand-knotted weaving rather than tufted or machine work. You can see it in the photographs of the back and the corner: individual knots, a firm handle, and side cords finished by hand. The wool is springy with a clear sheen, cut at a medium pile that will take traffic in a dining room or great room for decades. As an Oriental rug in a 9 by 18 format, it also solves a problem most buyers cannot solve at all, since very few looms are set up wide enough and run long enough to produce a single piece of this length.