Antique Chinese Art Deco Carpet

A particularly beautiful and unusual antique Chinese Art Deco carpet, distinguished by its soft celadon-green field, vibrant rose-red border, and wonderfully free-form floral composition. The open design gives the carpet a light, elegant appearance while allowing its remarkable colors and individual motifs to stand out. The spacious pale celadon to soft sage-green field is decorated asymmetrically with flowering branches and trailing vines bearing peonies and other blossoms in shades of lavender, violet, rose, deep blue, burgundy, ivory, soft yellow, and green. Rather than using a formal central medallion, the decoration is arranged naturally around the field, leaving a generous open center that gives the carpet a sophisticated and highly decorative character. Especially interesting are the Chinese scholar's objects and auspicious decorative motifs concentrated toward the lower portion of the field. These include flowering vessels, vases, small containers and other stylized objects, accompanied by additional blossoms and foliage. Their irregular placement gives the carpet considerable personality and makes the design much more unusual than the more conventional floral Chinese carpets of the period. The broad rose-red to raspberry border is particularly striking against the muted green field. Instead of a continuous repeating border pattern, it is ornamented at intervals with individual flowering branches and sprays, preserving the open quality of the overall composition. A narrow soft green outer surround completes the design. The close-up photograph shows a substantial, lustrous wool pile, with the characteristic sheen and changing appearance of color depending upon the direction of the pile and light. The reverse also shows a sound, regular construction consistent with a good-quality early Chinese carpet.