13'2" x 19'9" Persian Tabriz Rug | Navy Bird and Blossom Medallion | Approx. 500 KPSI Wool and Silk

This is a room-defining piece: a 13'2" x 19'9" hand-knotted Tabriz with a wool and silk pile laid over a cotton foundation, woven at roughly 500 knots per square inch. At that density the weaver can draw a parrot's tail feather or a single cherry blossom petal in three or four colors and have it read cleanly from standing height, which is exactly what happens across this navy field. The proportions put it firmly among oversize Persian rugs, the sort of piece bought for a great room, a formal dining room seating 12, or a double-height entry. The pile stands full and even, the selvages and fringe are intact, and every rug we ship carries a certificate of authenticity documenting origin, materials and knot count.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a large 16 point star medallion built up in concentric rings, with an ivory rosette cluster at the core, an olive and emerald inner field, and a burgundy outer ring carrying curled palmettes and split-leaf arabesques. Above and below it run slender pendant cartouches in burgundy and camel, and the 4 corners are filled with camel-ground spandrels drawn with the same vocabulary of lotus palmettes and scrolling vine. What lifts this piece above a standard medallion layout is the field itself: flowering trees rise from the lower ground, their branches loaded with rose and ivory blossoms, and among them sit pheasants, parrots, doves and small songbirds, each one shaded with several tones rather than outlined flat. Square panel motifs and small garden vignettes are tucked in near the ends. The main border is a wide burgundy band of alternating pistachio palmettes and floral bouquets, framed by ivory guard stripes of blue and red rosettes and an outer navy meander, so the drawing stays contained instead of running to the edge.

A Navy, Burgundy and Green Palette

The ground is a deep midnight navy, close to black where the pile lies away from the light and clearly blue where it catches it. That darkness is doing real work: it makes the ivory, rose pink, sky blue and gold of the blossoms and birds jump forward. The medallion is the brightest event in the rug, moving from emerald and olive green at the center through brick and burgundy tones out to its ivory-edged points, and the silk passages in the scrollwork catch light at a different angle than the wool, so the medallion appears to shift as you walk around it. The main border is a warm burgundy that reads brick red under lamplight, carrying pistachio green and gold palmettes with small turquoise and lilac accents. Camel and taupe in the spandrels and cartouches soften the contrast between the navy field and the red border, and the ivory guard stripes keep the whole composition legible from across a large room.

Woven in Tabriz, Northwest Persia

Tabriz, in the northwest of Persia, has been the country's most organized weaving city for centuries, and it is the place where curvilinear court drawing and workshop discipline meet. Weavers there work to the Raj system, counting knots per gereh across the width, and a piece in the 500 knots per square inch range sits well above commercial production and into the territory serious buyers of Persian Tabriz rugs look for. A rug this size at this fineness is a multi-year job on a wide loom, with two or three weavers working side by side from a cartoon, and the evenness of the field, the symmetry of the medallion and the way the border turns the corners all point to a well-run workshop. The cotton warp and weft give it the weight and structural stability an oversize piece needs, while the wool and silk pile keeps the surface soft underfoot and slightly lustrous.