13'3" x 16'6" Mahi Tabriz Design Oriental Rug | Wool & Silk on Silk Foundation | Green Field

This 13'3" x 16'6" room filling piece is a hand-knotted Oriental rug woven in wool and silk on a silk foundation, made in China in the 2000s to the classic Mahi Tabriz drawing. A silk warp lets the weaver hold a much tighter, straighter knot line than cotton allows, and you can see the result in how cleanly the tiny herati rosettes stack across nearly 17 feet without wandering. The silk in the pile catches light along the salmon and ivory tones, so the field shifts as you walk the room. It arrives in excellent condition with a full even pile, tight selvages and original hand-tied cotton fringe, and every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity. This is a true oversize floor covering, sized for a large formal room where the furniture sits entirely on the rug.

Design and Motifs

The field is the mahi, or fish, pattern: a diagonal lattice of slim red and ivory diamonds, each one holding a rosette flanked by the two curved lanceolate leaves that give the design its fish name. The repeat is small and relentless, running edge to edge with no break, which is exactly what buyers look for in a mahi. At center sits a slender diamond medallion filled with the same herati repeat on an ivory ground, outlined in olive and ivory and finished top and bottom with long pendant finials that taper to a hooked palmette. Four large scalloped spandrels sweep in from the corners, their wavy ivory and olive outlines cutting a cartouche shape across the field rather than sitting as plain corner blocks. The main border is an ivory band of alternating rosette palmettes and shield-shaped medallions joined by vine, with curled acanthus leaves and small blossoms in the gaps. Flanking it are paired red guard stripes of eight petal florets set in dark cartouches, a pale salmon minor stripe of slanted leaf and flower, and a solid dark green outer skirt that frames the whole rug.

A Green Ground With Ivory, Burgundy and Blue

Green is the anchor here and it is used in two weights. The ground of the field is a deep forest green, almost black where the pile leans away from the light, and the outer skirt and selvage repeat that green as a solid frame. Over the green the herati repeat is drawn in salmon, dusty rose, apricot and a soft gold, with small olive leaves and touches of steel blue at the rosette centers, so the overall read from standing height is a warm rose-copper haze rather than flat green. The main border reverses the scheme onto a creamy ivory ground, where the palmettes come up in terracotta, blush and pale celadon with navy outlining. Burgundy carries the guard stripes and the diamond outlines in the lattice, giving the pattern its structure, and blue appears as accents: navy in the border drawing, a lighter cornflower and slate blue in the eight petal florets and in the star rosettes on the reverse side. Ivory does the separating work throughout, tracing the medallion, the spandrel scallops and the smallest flowers so nothing muddies.

Origin and Weaving Quality

This rug was made in China, where the better workshops have spent decades weaving the classical Oriental medallion and herati formats to a very high standard, and it carries the Mahi Tabriz drawing that those workshops reproduce more faithfully than almost any other pattern. The tell is the foundation: silk warps, which are stronger and finer than cotton at the same gauge, let the weaver pack more knots across the width and keep the tiny lattice diamonds square over a 16'6" length. The pile is wool with silk worked into the highlights, so the flowers and the medallion outlines have a sheen the surrounding wool does not, and that contrast is what keeps a dense all over field from reading as busy. Handling it, the back is even and tightly packed, the selvages are wrapped in green and sound, and the fringe is original. For a large formal room this is a lot of hand-knotted rug for the money, and it does the job a palace size Oriental piece is supposed to do: it sets the color scheme for everything else in the space.