11'4" x 16'6" Persian Tabriz Mahi Rug | Wool & Silk Herati Fish Design | 60 Raj, Approx. 400 KPSI, Never Used

This 11'4" x 16'6" Tabriz Mahi is a full palace piece, hand-knotted in wool with silk worked into the medallion outlines and the scalloped edging so those lines catch light differently from the wool around them. It has never been on a floor: the pile stands even from end to end, the ivory selvages are clean, and the hand-tied fringe is untouched. At 60 Raj, roughly 400 knots per square inch, the herati drawing stays crisp at full size rather than coarsening the way village work does when it is scaled up, and the low, tightly beaten pile means the whole 16'6" length lies flat and takes furniture without crushing. Rugs of this footprint sit in our oversize Persian rugs group, and it ships free anywhere in the 50 states with a certificate of authenticity documenting origin, materials and knot count.

Design and Motifs

Mahi means fish, and the name comes from the repeating unit that fills the entire field: a small rosette set inside a diamond lattice, flanked by 4 curved lanceolate leaves that read as fish circling a pool. Here that unit repeats thousands of times in strict rows, broken only by the layered diamond medallion at center, which is drawn with ring after ring of fine scallops and finished with a small 8 petal rosette at its core. Slender pendants run off the medallion toward each end, and an anchor shaped cloud band sits above and below them. The field is then framed by a huge scalloped ogee outline, so the herati continues uninterrupted underneath while the drawing above it shifts the color balance. In the 4 corners the same lattice carries on into quartered spandrels. The main border runs a chain of palmettes and turtle rosettes on a light ground, linked by a thin vine, and it is fenced on both sides by roughly 6 narrow guard stripes of alternating meander, reciprocal trefoil and running flowerheads.

The Ivory, Rust and Green Palette

Seen from across a room the field reads as a warm rust, almost terracotta, but the close photographs show how it is actually built: an ivory ground carrying so much madder red, brick and soft salmon in the tiny lattice that the eye blends it into one warm tone. Inside each fish unit are flecks of indigo navy and olive green, with small brown and mushroom leaves between them, and it is those cool dots that keep the warm field from going flat. The medallion deepens to a rust brown center ringed in cream silk scallops, and the ogee outline and pendants pick up a pale sage green that repeats nowhere else in the field. The main border swings the other way, to a light sage and pistachio ground with crimson, rose and moss flowerheads, so the rug is framed in green rather than in more red. Guard stripes alternate ivory, navy and brick, and the plain ivory selvage and natural cream fringe close it cleanly.

Tabriz Weaving and the 60 Raj Standard

Tabriz sits in the northwest corner of Persia and has been the country's most organized weaving city for centuries, working from drawn cartoons on vertical looms with a hooked knife that lets a weaver tie fast at very high density. Fineness there is quoted in Raj, the number of knots across one gereh of about 2.75 in: 40 Raj is commercial goods, 50 is fine, and 60 Raj, the grade of this piece, works out to roughly 400 knots per square inch and is where collector quality begins. That count is exactly what a Mahi field demands, because the pattern is a grid of miniature elements and any loss of resolution turns the fish into blur. The cotton warp and weft give a 16'6" length the stability it needs to stay square, the wool is spun tight and clipped low, and the silk is reserved for the outlines where the added sheen actually shows. A rug of this size at this count is a workshop commission, not a quick weave.