11'2" x 16'6" Oversize Oriental Rug | Wool & Silk on Silk Foundation | Tabriz Design

This is a genuine workshop piece: a hand-knotted 11'2" x 16'6" rug with a wool and silk pile worked over a silk foundation, woven in the 2000s and still in perfect, unworn condition. The silk warp is what makes the drawing possible here, holding a knot fine enough to carry curved vine work, bird heads and shaded petals across a field this wide. At just under 184 square feet it reads as a true palace piece, and it sits comfortably in the same bracket as our other oversize Oriental rugs, shipping free anywhere in the 50 states despite the weight. Every rug leaves our Freeport warehouse with a certificate of authenticity that records the size, materials and weave.

Design and Motifs

The layout follows the classical Tabriz medallion formula in full. An ivory 8 lobed star medallion holds the center, drawn with navy palmette cartouches inside it and a small teal and red rosette at the exact middle. Four large navy lobed medallions float in the corners of the field, each one packed with its own miniature garden of palmettes and blossoms, and on the long axis at either end a salmon and cream vase stands on a shallow footed base with two facing birds perched among the flowers rising out of it. The rest of the burgundy ground is filled edge to edge with an all over scrolling vine of rosettes, serrated leaves, carnations and boteh, never repeating in a way the eye can catch. Ivory spandrels close each corner of the field, and the border system runs four deep: a narrow blue rosette stripe, a broad ivory band of navy palmettes and split leaves, a navy main border carrying the same vocabulary in reverse, and a plain navy outer edge finished with an ivory kilim end and fringe.

The Burgundy, Navy and Ivory Palette

The field is a deep wine burgundy, clean and even across the whole 16'6" length, with no abrash and no light patches. Against it the navy is almost black at the border and medallion outlines, which is what gives the ivory medallion and spandrels their lift. Inside the drawing the secondary palette does the real work: sky blue and slate blue in the leaves, rose pink and salmon in the blossoms, sage and pine green in the stems, camel gold and warm brown in the palmette hearts, with small notes of cream and brick red at the flower centers. The silk is used as highlight rather than ground, so the vine work and the petals catch the light while the wool holds matte, and the whole field changes tone as you walk around it. Photographed straight on the rug reads red and ivory; from an angle the blues come forward.

Weaving Quality and Origin

This rug was made in China, in the workshop tradition that took up the classical medallion designs and now produces some of the finest hand-knotted work being woven anywhere. The back tells the story plainly: a tight, regular silk grid with small even knots, straight sides and a clean navy selvage, the sort of discipline that only comes from a loom run by an experienced master with a cartoon in front of him. A silk foundation allows a far higher knot density than cotton at this scale, which is why the curved outlines, the bird profiles and the shaded leaf tips survive at full size instead of going angular. If you are weighing the terminology, our guide on what separates an Oriental rug from a Persian one explains exactly where a piece like this sits. In perfect condition, with full pile and untouched ends, it is ready for a large formal room today.