12'10" x 19'10" Persian Tabriz Rug | Rust Field, Ivory Spandrels, Camel Border | Oversize, Never Used

This is a true palace piece: 12'10" x 19'10" of hand-knotted wool on a cotton foundation, woven in the Tabriz tradition and never put on a floor. The field runs a deep rust that carries warm terracotta light, framed by ivory corner spandrels and a wide camel border, with a pendant medallion sitting dead center. At 254 square feet it covers a great room, a formal dining room seating 12 or a hotel lobby without a seam or a compromise, which is exactly the job that oversize Persian rugs of this class were drawn for. The 3/8" pile is even and full across the whole span, the selvedges are tight and the ends are finished in clean ivory fringe. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The drawing is classic curvilinear Tabriz: a lobed central medallion on a camel ground, filled with a small radiating rosette and a ring of fine blossoms, finished at top and bottom with slender pendants that reach into the field. Around it the field is covered with an all over lattice of palmettes, lotus blossoms, split leaves and serrated lancet leaves riding continuous vine scrolls, drawn small enough that the pattern reads as texture from standing height and as individual flowers when you kneel. The 4 corners carry ivory spandrels with their own vine and palmette scheme, which is what gives the medallion its breathing room on a field this large. The main border is a wide camel band of alternating palmettes and flowering sprays, flanked by sage green guard stripes of running vine and a narrow reciprocal inner stripe. Look at the corner detail and you can see the drawing turns the corner properly, the vine resolving rather than being cut off, which is the mark of a well cartooned workshop piece.

The Rust, Camel and Sage Palette

The field is the anchor: a warm rust that sits between brick and terracotta, soft rather than fire engine red, with enough brown in it to work against oak, walnut and stone floors. Against that ground the weaver has laid a remarkably cool secondary palette. Sage and olive greens carry most of the leafwork, dusty blues and deep navy outline the palmettes and give the small flowers their definition, and ivory does the heavy lifting in the spandrels and in the highlights scattered through the field. The medallion shifts the temperature again, a camel and tan ground with an ivory and pale green center that lifts the middle of the rug and keeps 254 square feet from reading as one flat block of color. The wide camel main border repeats that tan, so the eye travels medallion to border and back. Touches of soft rose and salmon appear in the border blossoms and the spandrel vines. It is a warm rug with cool bones, which is why it settles just as easily into a traditional room with mahogany as into a pale, contemporary space.

Tabriz Weaving and the Making of an Oversize Rug

Tabriz sits in northwest Persia and has been the country's most organized weaving city for centuries, the place where the cartoon based workshop system was refined and where fineness is still counted in Raj, the number of knots across a gereh of about 2.75 in. Tabriz weavers work with a hook ended knife that lets them place knots quickly and consistently, which is why the city can execute a curved line cleanly and why it takes on commissions this size when village looms cannot. A 12'10" x 19'10" rug requires a loom built for it, a beam wide enough to hold nearly 13 ft of warp under even tension, and a team of weavers seated side by side working the same row for the years it takes to finish. Keeping the medallion centered, the spandrels symmetrical and the border cornering correct over that distance is the real skill. The wool here has the dry, resilient handle of good northwestern fleece, clipped to 3/8" so the pattern stays crisp, and set on a cotton foundation that will hold this rug flat and square for generations of use.