9' x 9' Chinese Qom Design Rug | Silk | Square

A true square at 9' x 9', hand-knotted in China with a pile of silk, worked to a Qom design. The composition is unusually literal about its geometry: a single circular medallion, drawn as a full disc rather than the more common lobed lozenge, sits on a black ground and very nearly fills the square, leaving the corners to a soft olive ground and a wide ivory border.

Design

The centre is a rosette of many rings, each ring a row of petals drawn in outline and filled with small flowerheads, opening from a pale green core through rose and cream to a scalloped edge. Around it the black field carries a thin white tendril that runs in loops from flower to flower, linking eight-petalled blossoms, half-palmettes and curled serrated leaves, with a larger ivory and rose palmette dropped at the top and bottom of the medallion. The olive corner quarters repeat the same vine at a slightly larger scale. Three bands make up the border: narrow floral guard stripes on either side of a broad ivory band of alternating lotus palmettes, small bouquets and scrolling stems, mitred cleanly at each corner as the photographs of the fringe end show.

Colour

The ground is a deep near-black that photographs flat but reads as dense charcoal-brown where the pile turns. Against it the drawing is almost all warm: rose and salmon pink in the petal rings and the field flowers, cream and ivory in the medallion outlines and the main border, with a dusty olive green holding the corners and the leaf work. Small touches of pale sky blue and a darker brick red sit inside the flowerheads and keep the palette from going entirely pink. The contrast between the dark disc and the pale border is the rug's main event; at a distance the two read as a circle inside a square.

Making

Hand-knotted with a silk pile, which accounts for the way the colour shifts from light to dark as the rug is turned, and for the crisp edges on details as small as a single petal outline. The reverse, shown folded back at one corner, is finely and evenly knotted, with the pattern legible on the back and the sides overcast in dark thread. The warp ends are finished as plain ivory fringe. The rug is new and in perfect condition, with full pile throughout.