11'8" x 16'10" Persian Tabriz Rug | Signed Ivory Floral Medallion | Oversize Palace Size

A palace-scale piece that still reads as light and airy: this 11'8" x 16'10" Persian Tabriz covers a full great room in ivory rather than the heavy reds most rugs of this footprint fall back on. It is hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation, and the weaver put his name in a small cartouche woven into the border, visible in the close-up photograph, which is something only a workshop willing to stand behind the piece does. The pile is even from end to end, the sides and ends are original and intact, and the condition is excellent. Every rug we ship carries our certificate of authenticity, and the back photograph with the ruler shows the knotting for anyone who wants to judge the weave for themselves. At this footprint you are in the realm of true oversize Persian rugs, where a single piece sets the tone for the entire room.

Design and Motifs

The drawing is classic Tabriz curvilinear work. A lobed central medallion sits in the middle of the ivory field, built from a red cusped outline around a navy core, with an 8 petal rosette at the very center and layered palmettes radiating outward. Slim pendants drop above and below the medallion, each one a small vase-shaped cartouche filled with flower heads. Around all of that the field is not left open: it is covered edge to edge with an all over lattice of curling vines, serrated leaves, carnations, rosettes and blossom sprays, the kind of dense floral drawing that only holds together when the knot count is high enough to carry a curved line. The 4 corner spandrels are drawn in navy and red with matching palmette clusters, giving the composition a clear frame inside the border. The main border is a wide red band of alternating palmettes and leafy vinework, flanked by several narrow guard stripes of running flower heads that keep the whole 16'10" length visually tight.

Color Palette

The field is a warm ivory that shifts toward soft cream and light camel depending on where the light falls, and it is that pale ground that makes this rug unusually easy to live with at palace size. Against it, the medallion and the main border work in a deep madder red that reads brick in the medallion and darker, closer to burgundy, in the border band. Navy blue does the structural work: it outlines the medallion core, fills the corner spandrels and draws the finest vine detail across the field. Green appears in measured doses, a true leaf green in the palmettes and rosettes and a cooler sage in the guard stripes, and it is the color that keeps the red from dominating. Scattered through the floral lattice are rose pink, pale sky blue, soft grey and touches of tan and terracotta, all of them small and used as highlights rather than blocks. The overall effect is ivory and red first, with blue and green reading as the detail that rewards a closer look.

Tabriz Origin and Weaving Quality

Tabriz sits in northwest Persia and has been the country's most organized weaving city for centuries, working from drawn cartoons rather than memory, which is exactly why a design this symmetrical can be carried across nearly 17 feet without the medallion drifting off axis. Tabriz weavers use a hook-ended knife and count fineness in Raj, and the tradition there is workshop production under a named master, with the finest houses signing their work in the border. That signature cartouche is present on this piece. The wool is the tough, lustrous highland fleece the region is known for, spun firm and clipped at a medium height so the floral detail stays legible while the pile still has enough body to take real traffic. On a cotton foundation this size, that combination is what makes a rug this large lie flat and hold its rectangular shape decade after decade. It is a formal, workshop-grade piece, and the scale means it was woven for a room that was measured before the loom was strung.