Baotou Rugs

Baotou rugs are hand knotted wool pile carpets from Baotou in Inner Mongolia, in the northern Chinese weaving belt. The antique Baotou rugs we stock date mostly from about 1900 to 1930; only three of our forty two carry a nineteenth century date.

The drawing is where the type is most distinctive. A fretwork or Greek key border runs on half of ours, and birds, vases, animals and pictorial landscape scenes appear several times more often here than across the rest of our catalogue, joined by cloud bands and the wan motif. Floral, geometric, allover and medallion layouts are all common, with no single layout dominating. Ivory, beige and cream grounds lead the palette on nearly half, with brown earth tones and blue next in roughly equal numbers.

Most are scatter size and nearly all are rectangular; room size pieces are a minority, and a few are woven square or long and narrow. Collectors treat Baotou as a distinctive category of antique Chinese weaving; read more about the history of Chinese rugs, and discover how Baotou relates to Ningxia weaving traditions. Measured across every Baotou we hold, these are small, late rugs: a median 23 square feet, 29 of 42 recorded circa 1920, and a price per square foot that sits at the market for their size and date rather than below it. Our antique Baotou, Mongolian and Kansu rugs guide gives the prices, the formats and the motifs in full.