10' x 16' Antique Persian Tabriz Rug | Royal Blue Field | Rust Star Medallion, Fine Wool

A 10' x 16' Persian Tabriz of this drawing quality is a room-defining floor rather than an accent piece. The royal blue ground carries an unbroken lattice of curving vine and flower from one selvedge to the other, with a rust and ivory star medallion anchoring the center and 4 matching corner pieces closing the composition. The pile is a firm 3/8" of fine wool on a cotton foundation, the handle is heavy and even, and the condition is perfect, with full pile and clean original fringe at both ends. It ships with a certificate of authenticity and belongs in the small group of genuinely usable oversize Persian rugs that were drawn as carefully as a small workshop piece.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a many-pointed star medallion in rust, filled with ivory arabesque tracery and small paired palmettes, with slender pendants reaching north and south into the field. Around it the field is worked as a true all-over garden: split leaves, lotus heads, curled palmettes, tulips, carnations and countless small rosettes carried on a fine vine that mirrors across both axes. Four rust spandrels repeat the medallion vocabulary in the corners, each outlined in ivory. The main border alternates lobed cartouches of ivory and rust with turquoise star rosettes on a near-black blue ground, and 4 narrow guard stripes of meandering vine and reciprocal trefoil frame it inside and out. The drawing is curvilinear throughout, with no broken lines, which is the mark of a cartoon drawn by a professional designer rather than woven from memory.

Royal Blue, Rust, Green and Ivory

The field is a saturated royal blue that deepens toward indigo under low light and opens up to a clear mid blue where the light falls across the pile. Against it the medallion and spandrels read as warm rust, closer to terracotta than to true red, softened at the edges with apricot. Ivory does the outlining work throughout, keeping the crowded field legible, and it also fills the small blossoms scattered across the ground. Olive and sage green fill the leaves and much of the vine, while turquoise appears as a deliberate accent in the border rosettes, in a handful of field cartouches and in the leaf work near the medallion. Smaller passages of gold, dusty rose and charcoal appear where the palette shifts between dye lots, and that gentle movement across the blue is exactly what separates a naturally dyed older weave from a flat modern reproduction.

Tabriz Weaving in Northwest Persia

Tabriz sits in the northwest of Persia and has been the country's most organized weaving city for centuries, with designers, dyers and master weavers working as a trade rather than as a village craft. Fineness there is counted in Raj, the number of knots across a gereh of roughly 2.75 inches, and even at commercial grades a Tabriz loom is built to hold tension over a very long warp, which is why a piece 16' long can stay square and lie flat. This rug shows that discipline: consistent knot count from end to end, a cotton foundation that keeps the rug stable, and a wool pile with the tight, slightly waxy handle Tabriz weavers get from well-spun highland fleece. The back, shown against a ruler, is even and legible, and the sides and ends are intact.