10'3" x 13'2" Persian Tabriz Rug | Semi-Antique Floral Medallion | Red Field, Navy Border

This is a room-size Persian Tabriz rug of the classic city type, 10'3" x 13'2", hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation with a 3/8" pile that still stands up evenly across the whole field. It is a semi-antique piece, old enough that the reds have settled into a deep, slightly softened tone rather than the flat brightness of a new rug, but with no low spots, no repairs and no visible wear in any of the photographs. The back shot shows the knotting clearly: tight, regular rows on a pale cotton warp, with the design reading almost as sharply from the reverse as it does from the pile side. Sized for a proper dining table or a full living room seating group, it sits squarely in the most useful of all Persian formats, and it ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming it as a genuine hand-knotted Persian rug.

Design and Motifs

The drawing is a Tabriz floral medallion carried over a fully covered allover field, which is a harder thing to weave than it first looks. At the center sits an 8 point star medallion in ivory and teal, filled with small stylized blossoms and outlined by a serrated teal surround that radiates back into the red ground. Above and below it, matching pendants close the vertical axis, and the 4 corner spandrels repeat the same vocabulary at reduced scale. Between them the field is packed with scrolling vine, broad palmettes, curled saz leaves and small rosettes, laid out symmetrically but drawn with enough variation in the leaf shapes that the eye keeps moving. The main border is a navy ground carrying large turned palmettes and flower heads linked by a thin vine, framed on both sides by a teal minor border of running flowerheads and then by narrow ivory and dark guard stripes with small cross motifs. It is a disciplined, workshop-drawn layout, the sort of pattern a cartoon designer sets out square by square before a single knot is tied.

The Color Palette: Red, Navy, Teal and Ivory

The field is a true red with a slight rose cast in daylight, not a brick or rust red, and it is remarkably even from end to end with only the gentlest tonal movement across the width. Against it the navy main border reads almost black at a distance and resolves into deep indigo up close, which is what gives the rug its weight and keeps such a busy field from feeling restless. The third color is the one that makes this piece: a clear teal to turquoise green that fills the medallion surround, the minor borders and the leaf work, appearing in at least two strengths, a bright sea green and a darker petrol tone. Ivory does the outlining, the palmette hearts and the guard stripes, and a soft olive green plus small touches of camel, brown and pale gold appear in the flower heads. The close-up photographs show how the ivory outlines separate every motif from the red ground, which is why the pattern stays legible even at arm's length across a large room.

Tabriz Weaving and City Workshop Quality

Tabriz sits in northwest Persia and has been the commercial and design capital of Persian weaving for centuries, the city where the workshop system, the paper cartoon and the Raj measure of fineness were all refined. A Tabriz is a city rug in the fullest sense: warps tensioned on a vertical loom, a designer's drawing followed line by line, symmetrical Turkish knots beaten down hard, and a pile clipped low enough to hold curved detail. That is exactly what you see here in the unbroken curve of the vine, the crisp serration of the medallion and the perfectly closed corners of the border. Tabriz wool is tough highland fleece, which is why a semi-antique piece like this one can have decades behind it and still show a full, springy pile. Among 10x13 Persian rugs, a well-preserved Tabriz in the red and navy palette remains the benchmark against which the others get judged.