11'3" x 14'6" Persian Tabriz Rug | Red Field, Gold Medallion | Semi-Antique 1970s Workshop Weave

This 11'3" x 14'6" Persian Tabriz rug is a true room-filling weave, hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation and drawn in the curvilinear workshop manner that made Tabriz the drafting capital of Persian weaving. The field reads as a deep tomato red, the main border as a broad saffron gold, and the center as a layered gold and midnight blue star medallion that holds the full 14'6" length together without ever crowding it. Woven in the 1970s and now settled into semi-antique color, the pile remains full and even edge to edge, with the original gold-toned fringe and selvages intact. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity, and at this scale it sits squarely among the oversize Persian rugs built to run wall to wall under a full seating group.

Design and Motifs

The drawing is a classic Tabriz medallion and spandrel composition, worked out on a cartoon and followed knot for knot. At the center sits a multi-lobed star medallion filled with gold arabesque and small blossoms, ringed in midnight blue and finished top and bottom with long tapering pendants and pointed finials. Four corner spandrels repeat the same gold ground and the same vine scroll, so the eye reads the field as one continuous garden interrupted by the medallion rather than two separate schemes. Across the red ground, curling vines carry palmettes, rosettes, serrated leaves and small flowering sprays in mirrored pairs, each one outlined in dark navy so the shape stays crisp against the red. The main border runs a repeating sequence of large palmettes and round rosettes on saffron gold, framed by narrow guard stripes of reciprocal navy and red meander. Close inspection shows the outlining work clearly: fine single-knot contour lines that keep a curved stem genuinely curved, which is the detail that separates a workshop Tabriz from a village copy of one.

A Palette of Saffron Gold, Deep Red and Midnight Blue

Color is the first thing this rug does to a room. The field is a warm tomato to garnet red that shifts with the light and with the direction of the pile, reading brighter where the nap lies away from you and deeper where it lies toward you. Against it, the border and spandrels are a saturated saffron gold with an amber cast, closer to old honey than to yellow, and it is that gold that gives the rug its glow in lamplight. Midnight blue does the structural work: it outlines the medallion, fills the pendants, holds the guard stripes and anchors the palmettes so the warm tones never turn soft. Through the field and border run quieter notes of pine and sea green, a muted olive on the leaves, apricot and peach in the flower centers, chestnut brown and small touches of ivory. The overall effect belongs with the best red and burgundy Persian rugs, warm and formal at once, and the reverse shows the same clear tones carried straight through to the knot.

Tabriz: The Workshop Weaving Capital of Northwest Persia

Tabriz sits in the northwest of Persia, high on the Azerbaijan plateau, and has been the country's design and trade center for handmade rugs since the Safavid era. What defines the town is the workshop system: a master designer draws the cartoon, and weavers follow it across the loom with the Tabriz hook, which is why Tabriz work holds a symmetrical medallion and a flowing vine so much more accurately than village weaving ever could. Fineness there is measured in Raj, knots per gereh across the width, and the weave on this piece shows the tight, regular rows and firm handle expected of a good commercial-to-fine Tabriz loom, dense enough to keep the fine outlining legible yet heavy enough to lie dead flat at 11'3" x 14'6". Wool from the surrounding highlands takes dye deeply and wears slowly, and after roughly 50 years this rug still carries full pile with no thinning through the traffic lanes. That combination of drafted design, disciplined knotting and hard-wearing wool is what keeps an oversize Tabriz on the floor generation after generation.