10' x 13'4" Wool and Silk Tabriz Mahi Rug | Herati Fish Design | Handmade in India, Never Used

This is a full room-size piece measuring 10' x 13'4", hand-knotted in wool with silk highlights on a cotton foundation and drawn in the Tabriz Mahi pattern: a scalloped ivory medallion floating on a ruby red field filled edge to edge with the tiny fish and diamond lattice that gives the design its name. The weave is tight and even, the pile is short and lustrous, and the silk catches the light along the medallion outlines and the drawn vine work. It has never been used, never been laid in a room, and it arrives with a certificate of authenticity. At this scale it is one of the more useful sizes we carry, and it sits comfortably alongside our other 10x13 area rugs for buyers who need a rug that covers the seating group entirely rather than floating in the middle of it.

Design and Motifs

The Mahi, or fish, layout is one of the most disciplined patterns in the hand-knotted repertoire, and it only reads properly when the knot count is high enough to keep the small repeats crisp. Here the entire field is covered in the Herati lattice: paired curved leaves around a small diamond, with a four petal rosette at each junction, repeated thousands of times without a break in rhythm. At the center sits a cloud-edged medallion in ivory, outlined in pale sage, with a dark inner medallion carrying orange, cream and rust flowerheads, and two matching pendants extending above and below. The 4 corners carry scalloped spandrels in the same lattice worked over a lighter tan ground, so the eye reads the field as a single continuous carpet of pattern rather than a set of blocks. The main border is ivory, drawn with palmettes, rosettes and a connected vine scroll, framed by several narrow guard stripes in sage, tan and black, and finished with a solid red selvedge and white cotton fringe. As an Oriental rug built on a classical drawing, it is formal without being heavy.

A Ruby Red Field With Ivory, Sage and Brown

The field is a deep ruby red that shifts toward burgundy where the pile leans away from the light and lifts toward a warmer cherry tone where it leans into it, the natural play of a short, dense wool and silk pile rather than any irregularity in the dye. Against that red, the medallion and spandrels are a soft ivory to cream, cooled by a pale sage green outline that traces every scallop and repeats in the guard stripes. The inner medallion is nearly black, which anchors the whole composition and keeps the ivory from floating away. Scattered through the lattice are small accents of coral orange, olive and slate blue, plus thousands of tiny white knots that read as sparkle from across the room. Brown and tan carry the spandrel grounds and the outer guard bands, tying the ivory border back to the red field. The overall effect is warm and traditional, and it works with dark wood, brass, cream upholstery and deep green or navy walls.

Hand-Knotted in India in the Tabriz Mahi Tradition

This rug is honestly made in India, and that is a recommendation rather than a caveat: India is where most of the world's best contemporary hand-knotted work is now produced, on cotton warps, with skilled weavers working from full cartoons and finishing at a standard that used to belong only to the classical city workshops. The Mahi drawing demands that standard, because a loose weave turns the fish lattice into mush and blurs the curve of the medallion. Here the knots are fine and regular, the back is clean and legible, and the pile has been clipped low so every element in the lattice stays sharp, as the detail photographs show. The silk content sits in the highlights, where it reflects differently from the wool and gives the medallion and vine work a quiet sheen. The back label records the design as Mahi, the size as 13.4 x 10.0 and the colorway as red and ivory, and the piece is in perfect, unused condition straight from the loom.