Rug No. has found its new home.
Every rug we sell is one of a kind, so that piece is gone. Here are others in the same spirit, or tell Rug Finder what you are looking for.
Burgundy Rugs
Burgundy sits at the deep end of the madder range, closer to wine and oxblood than to bright red. These vintage rugs, almost all Persian, were woven with that depth in mind, usually in the field, sometimes held back for the border.
Burgundy, madder at its deepest
Burgundy is what madder root gives up at the end of a long dye bath. Where a short immersion produces the bright brick and terracotta of village weaving, a long one, in hard water and with the right mordant, drives the color toward wine and oxblood. It took more dyestuff and more time than the brighter reds. Here it shows up most often in Baluch, Hamedan and Turkmen rugs, alongside city pieces from Tabriz.
The tone shifts with the light. Under a lamp it goes warm and almost brown; in daylight the red comes forward. It is a color that steadies a room rather than announcing itself.
What separates it from a modern red
A synthetic burgundy is the same color at the tip of the pile as at the base. A madder burgundy is not. The dye penetrates unevenly, so as a rug wears the color shifts slightly, and the field ends up holding several closely related shades at once. Look across a vintage burgundy rug at a low angle and you will see it move, warmer where the light hits, almost black in the shadow of the pile.
How it ages
Madder is one of the most light-fast natural dyes known, which is why fifty-year-old burgundies still look saturated rather than washed out. What age does instead is soften the edge between the field and the border, and burnish the surface where feet have passed. A burgundy rug that has been walked on for decades has a depth that a new one, however well made, simply has not earned yet.
Using a dark red in a room
Burgundy is a weighty color, not a bright one. It gives a dining room its center, lends a library some gravity, and works under dark wood in a way lighter reds do not. It is also forgiving: a dark madder field hides daily life very well, which is precisely why these rugs were put in the busiest rooms of the houses they came from.
What it sits with
Warm neutrals, brass, walnut and worn leather. Burgundy also looks good next to deep green or indigo, a pairing the weavers themselves used constantly inside the same rug.
Styling a red this deep? Our guide to decorating with an oxblood rug covers the woods, colors and light that suit it.
Is an oxblood rug the same as a burgundy one?
Close, but not identical. Oxblood is a deep red pulled toward brown, darker than cherry and warmer than wine; burgundy leans toward wine. Both come from a long madder dye bath, so they share this page. The woods and colors that suit each are in the oxblood rug guide.