11'2" x 16' Persian Tabriz Mahi Rug | Ivory Herati Fish Field with Salmon Medallion | 60 Raj Wool and Silk

At 11'2" x 16", this is a full palace-scale Tabriz woven in the 2000s in the Mahi drawing, the fish pattern that the Tabriz workshops are measured by. The pile is wool with silk used to pick out the outlines and the fine detail, knotted over a cotton foundation at 60 Raj, roughly 400 knots per square inch, which is why a lattice this small stays legible across 16 feet of length. The wool has a low, tight clip and a quiet sheen, and the piece is in perfect condition with no wear, no repair and no restoration. It ships with a certificate of authenticity. Weaves of this fineness are uncommon among oversize Persian rugs, where most looms drop the knot count to cover the ground faster.

Design and Motifs

The field carries an unbroken herati lattice: a small rosette inside each diamond compartment, flanked by four curved lanceolate leaves, the leaves that give the pattern its Mahi, or fish, name. The repeat is tiny and perfectly registered, running corner to corner without a drift in the drawing. At the center sits a lobed diamond medallion built in concentric rings, each ring cusped and scalloped and outlined in pale blue and ivory, with a small trefoil at the very core. Slim cusped pendants rise above and drop below the medallion on the long axis. Broad scalloped spandrels sweep out of all 4 corners in a smoky olive tone, framing the open ivory ground. The main border runs a repeating sequence of palmettes, 8 petal rosettes and split leaves on a continuous vine, held between narrow guard stripes of running floral meander and a fine reciprocal minor stripe on either side.

A Study in Ivory and Salmon

The field ground is a clean ivory, close to undyed cream, and it is what makes the rug feel light in a room this large. Against it the medallion and the main border read salmon, a warm coral-pink that shifts toward terracotta at the medallion's outer ring and toward soft blush across the border ground. Inside the lattice the small motifs are worked in indigo, deep pine green, brick red and a soft camel gold, each knot ringed in dark brown, so from standing height the ivory dominates and from close up the field is full of color. Sky blue is used as a drawn line rather than a mass, outlining the medallion, the pendants and the scalloped inner edge of the field. The border carries the widest palette: sage and bottle green rosettes with ivory petals, aubergine and burgundy blossoms, and pale gold palmettes on that salmon ground. The fringe and the flat selvage finish in matching ivory.

Woven in Tabriz, Northwest Persia

Tabriz sits in the northwest of Persia and has been the country's most organized weaving city for centuries, working from full cartoons with a hook-tipped knife that lets a weaver hold very fine gauge over a long run. Fineness there is quoted in Raj, the number of knots across a gereh of about 2.75 inches: 40 Raj is commercial work, 50 is fine, and 60 Raj, the grade of this rug, is where a Tabriz enters collector territory at roughly 400 knots per square inch. That density is exactly what the Mahi pattern demands, since the fish leaves collapse into mush at a coarser count. The cotton warps are double wefted and pulled tight, so the rug lies dead flat and holds a rigid rectangle even at 16 feet. Combined with the low-clipped wool and the silk-picked outlines, it is a floor that takes traffic without blurring its drawing.