10'11" x 17' Persian Tabriz Rug | Red Floral Medallion | Oversize Palace Size

This is a genuine palace piece: 10'11" x 17' of hand-knotted wool on a cotton foundation, laid out in the classic Tabriz formula of a deep red field, a single luminous medallion and a wide navy border. At 185 square feet it belongs in the small group of oversize Persian rugs that can actually fill a great room, a formal dining room seating 12, or a long open-plan floor without looking like a mat adrift in the middle of it. The pile is even and full, the ends and sides are original and intact, and the back photograph shows a tight, regular knot node with crisp color separation, which is what you want to see before spending money on a rug this size. Condition is excellent. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity documenting origin, materials and construction, and the weight and freight surcharge that other sellers add to a rug of these dimensions does not exist here.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a 16 point star medallion built in concentric rings: an ivory core with a green and rose rosette at its heart, a ring of light blue lotus heads and small squared florets, then a lobed navy surround outlined in a thin ivory line that makes the whole shape lift off the red ground. Slender navy pendant finials drop from the top and bottom of the medallion on a stem, each one tipped with a small palmette and a spray of leaves. The field around it is not left open; it is filled edge to edge with a curvilinear allover system of split palmettes, serrated saz leaves, cloud bands and fine scrolling vine, drawn small enough that the pattern reads as texture from standing height and as individual flowers when you crouch down. The corner spandrels repeat the medallion's vocabulary in condensed form. The border is a three-part composition: a wide navy main band carrying alternating ivory cartouches and eight-lobed rosette medallions, flanked on both sides by periwinkle guard stripes of trailing vine and small carnations, with a final narrow ivory outer stripe framing the whole rug.

The Red Field, Navy Border and Periwinkle Guards

The ground is a true Persian red, a cool crimson with a faint blue undertone rather than a brick or tomato red, and it carries a subtle vertical movement through the pile that good hand-spun wool gives when it takes dye. Against it the main border sits in a near-black navy that anchors all 17 feet and keeps such a large field from floating. The real character comes from the third color: a soft periwinkle, almost a faded denim blue, used for the guard stripes and repeated inside the medallion and in the larger leaves of the field, which cools the red and separates the drawing. Around those three run ivory and cream for the cartouches, outlines and medallion core, a muted sage and olive green in the leaves and rosette centers, warm rose and salmon pink in the smaller flower heads, and touches of gold and rust that appear only at close range. It is a rich, formal palette that sits naturally with mahogany, walnut and dark leather, and it belongs firmly in the family of red and burgundy Persian rugs that anchor traditional rooms.

Tabriz Weaving and the Quality of This Piece

Tabriz, in the northwest of Persia, is the workshop city that industrialized fine weaving without losing the drawing, and its quality is measured in Raj, the number of knots across a gereh of roughly 2.75 in. Anything a workshop attempts at palace scale has to be planned on a cartoon from the first row, because a curved vine that drifts by one knot at the start will be inches out of true by the far end 17 feet later. This rug holds its line: the border cartouches march evenly down both long sides, the corners resolve cleanly rather than being cut short, and the medallion sits square in the field. The back shows fine, tightly packed knot nodes on a cotton warp and weft, with the design legible from the reverse, which is the honest test of a workshop piece rather than a village copy. The wool is dense and low-cut, the kind of pile that takes decades of traffic in a dining room or hallway and only picks up sheen for it.