10'5" x 14' Persian Tabriz Rug | Navy Medallion on Red Field | Semi-Antique, Excellent Condition

A semi-antique room size piece woven in the Tabriz manner, this rug measures 10'5" x 14' and covers a full living room or a 10 seat dining table with the border still reading clean on all 4 sides. The pile is wool at a 3/8" clip on a cotton foundation, dense enough to hold a crisp line in the small floral work yet soft underfoot where the traffic runs. Pile height is even from end to end, the selvedges are intact and the fringes are original, which is what puts this one in the excellent bracket rather than the merely serviceable one. Every rug we ship carries our certificate of authenticity, confirming the hand-knotted construction, the wool pile and the Persian origin recorded above.

Design and Motifs

The drawing follows the classic Tabriz medallion formula. At center sits a navy starburst medallion built around an ivory cartouche, with an 8 petal rosette in the middle and small rose sprays worked inside the ivory panel, finished top and bottom with dagger shaped pendants. The field around it is not left empty: it carries a continuous lattice of scrolling vine, palmettes, lotus heads and small ivory blossoms that runs corner to corner, so the eye keeps moving instead of stopping at the medallion. The 4 spandrels repeat the medallion drawing in quarter form on an ivory ground, giving the corners weight and squaring the composition. The main border is a wide ivory band of alternating palmettes and turtle style floral heads joined by a thin vine, framed by narrow navy and rose guard stripes flecked with tiny white star flowers, and the outer edge closes in plain red.

Reading the Red, Ivory and Navy Palette

The field is a warm true red, closer to a soft brick than a hot scarlet, and it is the color that will set the room. Against it the main border reads ivory to light cream, bright enough in the corner photograph to give the whole rug a clear frame and to lift a dark floor. The medallion, spandrel outlines and guard stripes are deep navy, and inside that navy the weavers dropped in turquoise and mid blue detail that only shows up close, along with rose, salmon, pale ivory, soft brown and a touch of gold at the flower centers. That mix of a red ground with ivory and navy is the most collected of all traditional combinations, so if you are shopping red and burgundy Persian rugs this one sits squarely in the middle of that lane. Natural light will pull the pinks forward, lamplight will deepen the navy.

Tabriz: Northwest Persia and the Weave Itself

Tabriz is the workshop city of northwest Persia and the place that formalized the medallion and vine layout most of the rug world now copies. Its weavers work on cotton warps with a hook, count fineness in Raj, and are known for holding a curved line true across a big field, which is exactly what you see here in the spandrel arcs and the unbroken vine scroll. The back of this piece shows a tight, regular knot with the pattern fully legible from the reverse, the mark of workshop rather than casual village work. At 10'5" x 14' it belongs with the larger room size pieces, so it is worth comparing it against our other 10 x 14 Persian rugs before you decide. A rug this heavy ships free to all 50 states.