11' x 18' Persian Tabriz Rug | All Over Floral, No Medallion | Semi-Antique 1970s

This is a true palace piece: 11' x 18' of hand-knotted wool from Tabriz, woven in the 1970s and still in excellent condition, with full pile and clean, even fringe at both ends. The weaver skipped the central medallion entirely and let a continuous floral lattice run wall to wall, which is the harder commission of the two because every repeat has to resolve against the border with nothing in the middle to hide behind. It is one of the few rugs in our oversize Persian rugs selection that reads as calm rather than busy at this scale. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity documenting origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The field is a classic Tabriz all over floral design with no medallion: paired arabesque vines sweep in long curves across the red ground, carrying rosettes, split palmettes, serrated saz leaves and small boteh forms that repeat in mirrored halves down the length. Rounded 8 petal rosettes in ivory and gold anchor the pattern at regular intervals, and slender curled tendrils fill the space between them so no area of the field sits empty. The main ivory border carries alternating cartouches and large lobed palmettes linked by a thin vine, with a rosette at each of the 4 corners resolved cleanly rather than cut off, a reliable sign the cartoon was drawn properly for this exact loom width. Two narrow sea green guard bands with small stylized blossoms frame the main border, and a fine reciprocal sawtooth stripe runs along the outer red selvage.

A Deep Red Ground Framed in Ivory and Sea Green

The field is a deep madder red that shifts toward true crimson where the light catches the pile and toward a darker wine tone in the shade, the natural directional play of good wool rather than any variation in dye. Against it the drawing is picked out in ivory, soft gold, warm camel and a range of greens from pale celadon in the border blossoms to a deep bottle green in the leaves. Navy blue does most of the outlining work, giving every palmette and vine a crisp edge, while smaller notes of salmon pink, rust orange, teal and dark aubergine appear inside the rosettes. The main border is a soft ivory that has warmed to cream with age, and the guard bands are that distinctive light sea green Tabriz workshops favor, which keeps the red from feeling heavy. If red is what you are after, this sits at the richer end of our red and burgundy rugs.

Woven in Tabriz, Northwest Persia

Tabriz in northwest Persia has been the country's most organized weaving city for centuries, and it is the place where the Raj system of counting knots across the width originated. A rug of these dimensions was woven on a purpose-built loom by a team working from a master cartoon, which is why the curvilinear vine work holds its line across 18 feet without drifting. The close-up of the reverse shows a tight, regular knot with the pattern fully legible from the back, wool pile on a cotton foundation, and heavy enough handle that the rug lies dead flat. Dated to the 1970s, it falls squarely in the semi-antique range, and if you want to understand how weavers and dealers date an Oriental rug, this piece is a textbook example: mature wool, softened palette, and no sign of the harsh chemical washes used later.