10'8" x 18' Persian Tabriz Rug | Red Floral Medallion | Oversize Wool and Silk Pile

This is a full palace format Tabriz, 18 feet long and 10'8" wide, hand-knotted in wool with silk worked through the highlights and finished at a close 1/4" pile so the drawing stays crisp from one end of the field to the other. A deep red ground carries a navy blue medallion that reads clearly from across a large room, and the corner spandrels drop into a soft sage that keeps the whole piece from feeling heavy. Pieces at this width are genuinely hard to find, which is why the best examples usually go straight into oversize Persian rugs for great rooms and formal dining spaces. The rug has never been used, the pile is even and the selvedges and cotton fringe are sound. It ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming it as a hand-knotted rug made in Persia.

Design and Motifs

The layout is the classical Tabriz medallion formula drawn at scale. A round navy medallion sits at the center, ringed by a turquoise sunburst of pointed rays and filled with a rosette core, tulip heads and tight arabesque tracery. Above and below it the field extends into long pendant cartouches, so the composition stretches along the 18 foot axis instead of sitting as a single isolated disc. The red ground itself is anything but plain: large curled split leaves in ivory sweep through it in mirrored pairs, joined by flowering vine, small palmettes and blue rosettes that repeat with strict symmetry across all 4 quarters. The sage spandrels at the corners carry their own vocabulary of boteh paisleys, leafy vine and vases in turquoise and brick red. Framing everything is a wide navy main border of alternating palmettes, urns and flowering sprays, set between narrow ivory and celadon guard stripes that give the outer edge a clean finish.

The Color: Red Ground, Navy Core, Sage Corners

The field is a warm brick red, slightly tomato rather than blue red, and it holds its tone evenly across the whole 128" width with the gentle variation you expect from natural dye lots. Against it the medallion reads as a true dark navy, almost ink at the outline and lifting into cobalt and sky turquoise where the arabesques cross it. The ivory leafwork is the third voice: a creamy off white that outlines the scrolling leaves and throws the red forward. Sage and celadon green fill the spandrels and the narrow guard stripes, cooling the corners and giving the eye somewhere soft to land, while smaller notes of olive gold, rose pink and a dusty teal appear in the flower heads and paisleys. Where the silk sits in the highlights the light catches and the same color shifts as you walk past. The overall effect is a rich traditional red and navy palette that works with dark wood, brass and warm neutral walls rather than fighting them.

Tabriz: The Weaving Capital of Northwest Persia

Tabriz sits in the northwest of Persia and has been the country's most organized weaving city for centuries, the place where workshop production, formal cartoon design and the Raj system of measuring fineness were all refined. Tabriz weavers use a hook tool and a cotton foundation that lets them build very large looms without the rug going out of square, which is exactly what a piece 18 feet long demands: the borders here run straight, the medallion is centered and the two ends match. The curved line work in the arabesques and the fine ivory leaf outlines are Tabriz signatures, and the wool and silk blend in the pile is the workshop grade rather than village work. Palace format weaving on this scale ties up a loom and a team for a long stretch, so surviving examples in unused condition are scarce; browse the rest of our oversize Persian rugs and you will see how few reach this width.