12'10" x 19'2" Persian Tabriz Rug | Ivory All-Over Floral Field | Signed Cartouche

At 12'10" x 19'2" this is a true palace piece, a hand-knotted Tabriz that fills a formal room end to end and still reads as one continuous drawing rather than a repeat stretched to fit. The ivory field is covered with a symmetrical all-over vine, the brick red main border frames it on 4 sides, and the weaver signed the work in a small ivory cartouche set into the border, which you can see in the close-up photograph. The pile is 3/8" wool on a cotton foundation, the surface is even across the whole 230 inch length, and the condition is excellent. It is one of the few genuinely useful oversize Persian rugs we can offer in this drawing quality, and it ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

There is no central medallion here. The weaver committed to an all-over floral design, a lattice of thin scrolling vines that carries large lobed palmettes, serrated rosettes, curled saz leaves and small budding sprays, each half of the field mirroring the other along the long axis. The palmettes are drawn in rotation, so a navy one sits beside a rose one and then a rust one, which keeps a field of this scale from ever looking mechanical. Around it run 5 border stripes: a wide brick red main band of alternating palmettes and cusped leaf forms, a pair of slate blue floral guards inside and out, and 2 narrow ivory ribbon stripes that separate the whole from the field. The signature cartouche breaks the rhythm of the main border at one end, an octagonal ivory panel of Persian script set among tulips and leaves, and that single interruption is the mark of a workshop piece rather than an anonymous commercial weaving.

A Detailed Look at the Colors

The ground is a warm ivory, closer to unbleached cream than to white, and it takes light beautifully at this scale. Against it the drawing is worked in a restrained, slightly dusty palette: brick red and terracotta in the larger palmettes, deep navy in the flower centers and outlines, a soft slate blue that appears throughout the vinework and then dominates the guard borders, old rose and pale salmon in the petals, and a muted sage green in the leaves and stems. The main border is a clear brick red, warmer and more saturated than the reds inside the field, which pulls the eye out to the edge and gives the ivory center room to breathe. The close-up of the pile shows how many of the tones are shaded rather than flat, with pink running into coral and blue running into ivory across a single petal. Nothing shouts; the whole rug settles into a room instead of competing with it.

Tabriz Origin and Weaving Quality

Tabriz sits in the northwest of Persia and has been the country's most disciplined commercial weaving city for well over a century, the place buyers go when they want curved line and precise drawing at room-filling size. Fineness there is measured in Raj, knots per gereh across the width, and the standard that separates a Tabriz workshop from a village loom is the ability to hold a design steady over a very long warp. That is the achievement in this piece: across 230 inches the vine never drifts, the border corners resolve cleanly at all 4 corners, and the two halves of the field still mirror each other at the far end. The wool is firm with a healthy sheen, knotted on a cotton foundation and clipped to 3/8", which is why the pile still stands upright and the pattern stays crisp. Signed, palace sized and in excellent condition, it belongs with the serious oversize Persian rugs rather than with ordinary large-format inventory.