11'6" x 16'6" Persian Tabriz Rug | Ivory Mahi Fish Design with Rust Medallion | Oversize Wool Pile

This 11'6" x 16'6" Persian Tabriz fills a full great room and still reads as one calm, disciplined piece of drawing rather than a busy floor. The ivory field carries the Mahi, or fish, pattern from selvage to selvage, and a wide scalloped medallion in graded rust with a pale green core sits dead center, echoed by cornerpieces at the 4 corners of the field. The pile is fine wool on a cotton foundation, the handle is supple and the rug is in perfect condition with full pile, straight sides and clean hand-tied fringe. It ships with a certificate of authenticity, and at this scale it sits squarely in the group of oversize Persian rugs that are bought to define a room, not to float inside it.

Design and Motifs

The field is a true Mahi repeat: a fine diamond lattice, each diamond holding a small rosette flanked by 2 curved lanceolate leaves, the pair of leaves that gave the pattern its fish name. The repeat is tiny and it never stumbles, which is the whole test of this design over almost 17 feet of length. At the center, concentric scalloped rings build outward from a small cusped rosette through a sage core into a broad rust ring, with slender pendant finials reaching toward each end of the rug. The cornerpieces repeat the same scalloped edge so the geometry stays consistent. The main border runs on ivory with large palmettes and open rosettes joined by a thin turning vine, and it is framed on both sides by several narrow guard stripes of rosettes and reciprocal drawing that tighten the whole composition.

A Warm Ivory Field with Rust and Sage Green

The ground is a warm ivory, closer to unbleached cream than to stark white, which is why the rug settles easily against oak and walnut floors. Across that ground the herati lattice is drawn in copper, terracotta and soft gold, so the field reads as a dusty rust haze from standing height and resolves into individual flowers only when you come closer. The medallion carries the strongest color: a saturated rust ring that grades lighter toward the middle, then a pale sage green core that cools the center and keeps the rug from going monochrome. Small notes of blue-green, honey gold and soft brick appear inside the border rosettes, and the fine outlining in dark brown and charcoal gives every leaf and petal a crisp edge. The border's ivory ground repeats the field tone, so the rug frames itself instead of drawing a hard line at the edge.

Tabriz Weaving and the Quality of the Knot

Tabriz sits in northwest Persia and has been the country's most organized weaving city for centuries, working on vertical looms with the Raj system, which counts knots per gereh across the width. The Mahi pattern is the city's signature and its hardest exercise, because a lattice that small only holds its shape when the knots per square inch are high enough to draw a curved leaf in a few nodes. You can see the result on the folded corner: a tight, even back where the pattern is legible from the reverse, cotton warps depressed into a firm grid, and wool that is springy rather than dry. This is workshop weaving in the mainstream Tabriz tradition, and it is the reason serious buyers keep coming back to Persian Tabriz rugs when they need a large floor covered without losing precision.