10'8" x 13'10" Persian Tabriz Rug | Black Mahi Herati Field | Tomato Red Diamond Medallion

This 10'8" x 13'10" Persian Tabriz is a full room size piece worked in the mahi, or fish, tradition that Tabriz weavers have refined into a house style. The wool pile is clipped low at 3/8", which is exactly what this drawing needs: at that height the tiny rosettes and lancet leaves stay legible from standing height instead of blurring together. The field reads black at a glance and resolves into deep indigo and aubergine tones as you walk around it, with a single tomato red diamond medallion holding the center and matching red corner triangles anchoring the 4 corners. It is a rug that fills a large living room or a long dining table setting without shouting, and it comes with a certificate of authenticity confirming origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The layout is a classic mahi composition: an all-over herati field repeated in small, tight units across the entire ground, with a stepped diamond medallion set over it rather than interrupting it. Each herati unit pairs a small 8 petal rosette with the curved lancet leaves that give the pattern its fish name, and the repeat runs unbroken from the medallion out to the corner triangles. The medallion itself is outlined twice, first in ivory and then in a fine sawtooth line, and it carries its own denser version of the same rosette and leaf vocabulary along with small paisley forms. A pendant drops from the top and bottom points. The main border is broad and floral, a run of shield shaped palmettes alternating with rounded rosettes and connected by thin vines, framed on both sides by ivory guard stripes carrying a running flowerhead, plus several narrow minor bands in blue and red that step the eye out to the navy selvage.

A Black Ground Lit by Tomato Red

The color scheme is built on contrast rather than blend. The ground is black with an indigo undertone, deep enough that the small motifs floating on it look almost lit from behind. Those motifs bring in ivory, saffron gold, soft teal blue, salmon and a brick red, so the field reads as a dense scatter of warm points on dark. The center medallion reverses the scheme entirely: tomato red ground with the same ivory, gold and teal detail work, which is what pulls your eye to the middle of the room. The corner triangles repeat that red on a slightly lighter, more coral note. In the border the tomato red returns at full width, cooled by the two ivory guard stripes and the blue minor bands. In a room with dark wood floors the black reads as an anchor; against pale oak or a light stone floor the red does the talking. Either way the palette is warm, and it sits comfortably with brass, walnut and leather.

Tabriz Weaving and Quality

Tabriz sits in the northwest of Persia and has been the country's most organized weaving city for centuries, which is why its workshops can carry a design like this across nearly 14 feet without the pattern drifting. Weavers there work to the Raj system, counting knots per gereh across the width, and the discipline shows here in the straightness of the medallion outline and in how evenly the herati repeat holds from one end of the field to the other. The rug is knotted in wool on a cotton foundation, the standard Tabriz build for a floor piece of this scale, and the low even clip is what keeps the small scale drawing crisp underfoot. The back photograph shows tight, regular rows and a clean finish at the ends. If you are shopping 10 x 14 Persian rugs, this is the size and weight of piece that settles into a room and stays there for decades.