10' x 13' Persian Tabriz Rug | Sheikh Safi Medallion Design | 1970s Vintage Wool Pile

This is a room-size Tabriz from the 1970s, woven in the Sheikh Safi pattern that Tabriz workshops reserve for their most formal commissions. The field is a deep navy blue carrying a radiant ivory and golden tan star medallion, and the drawing stays controlled across the full 10 feet of width, which is exactly where a weaker weave would wander. Hand-knotted wool pile on a cotton foundation, with a low, even nap that has worn in rather than worn out. At 10' x 13' it covers a full seating group or a 10 seat table, and it sits in the sweet spot of our 10x13 Persian rugs selection. Every rug we ship leaves Freeport with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The Sheikh Safi pattern takes its name from the shrine complex of Sheikh Safi, the source of the most celebrated medallion layout in Persian weaving, and this rug follows that architecture closely. At the center sits a burgundy 8 petal rosette inside a stepped star, framed by an ivory and golden tan medallion filled with hooked arabesque scrollwork and tiny leaf buds. Radiating out from it are 2 full rings of lobed palmettes, 8 to a ring, each one drawn in coral, saffron and sea green with a dark rosette at its heart. Pendant vase forms rise from the medallion at both ends of the field, and the remaining ground is filled with a lattice of thin vine, serrated leaves and small 5 petal blossoms worked all the way into the 4 corners, where ivory spandrels carry gold vinery. The main border runs red cartouches and shield palmettes over an olive-teal green ground, separated from the field by a narrow ivory inner band of paired blossoms, and the outer guard stripe repeats single rosettes on soft green. Nothing in the layout is improvised, which is the signature of a drawn cartoon rather than a village memory pattern.

A Study in Navy, Gold and Teal Green

The field is a true indigo navy, dark enough to read almost black in low light and clearly blue once the sun hits it, which is the reason this rug anchors a bright room so easily. Against it the palette is unusually warm for a blue ground: golden tan and honey yellow in the palmette outlines, ivory and oatmeal in the medallion and spandrels, burgundy and a lighter brick red through the border cartouches, with accents of coral, dusty rose and pale celadon in the smaller blossoms. The border ground shifts between olive and deep teal green depending on angle, a color Tabriz dyers use to cool down a red and navy scheme, and the outermost guard band lightens to a soft sage that keeps the edges from closing in. Look at the close detail shots and you can see how many shades sit inside a single palmette: 5 or 6 tones, each a separate dye lot of hand-spun wool, which is what gives the pile its depth. If you are building a room around a dark ground, this piece belongs with the navy blue Persian rugs rather than the lighter ivory decoratives.

Tabriz Weaving and the Workshop Tradition

Tabriz sits in the northwest of Persia and has been the commercial and design capital of Persian weaving for centuries, the city where the Raj system of counting knots across the width was formalized and where master designers still draw cartoons for workshops in surrounding towns. Tabriz weavers work on a cotton foundation with a hook-ended knife, which lets them hold a curved line and a repeating cartoon over a 13 foot length without the pattern drifting, and that discipline is visible here in the symmetry of the palmette rings and the way the border cartouches turn the corners cleanly. The wool is local highland fleece, dense and slightly lustrous, cropped low in the Tabriz manner so the drawing stays legible. A piece like this from the 1970s represents the last generation of large workshop weaving before export patterns shifted, and the even back and intact selvages tell you it was made to be used, not just admired. If you want to understand what the handle, the pile and the dyes say about age, our guide on how to date an Oriental rug walks through the same clues we use on the warehouse floor.