13'5" x 19'3" Persian Tabriz Rug | Ivory Floral Medallion | Wool and Silk Oversize

This is a true palace piece, 13'5" x 19'3" of hand-knotted wool and silk on a cotton foundation, woven in the workshop tradition of Tabriz in northwest Persia. The pile is a low 1/4", which is how a rug this large keeps its drawing crisp instead of letting the flowers blur, and the silk is used sparingly as highlight rather than as a whole surface, so the palmettes and leaf tips catch light while the ivory ground stays matte and calm. It is in excellent condition with even pile from end to end and full original ends and sides. Rugs like this belong in the small group of genuinely oversize Persian rugs that can cover a great room or a long formal dining table without a seam or a filler border, and every piece we ship leaves with a certificate of authenticity documenting origin, materials and construction.

Design and Motifs

The layout is the classic Tabriz formula handled with restraint. A lobed, cusped medallion sits dead center, stepped in three tiers, with a small rosette core surrounded by 8 curling leaf forms and a ring of tiny palmettes. Above and below it the medallion runs out into pendant finials that taper into the field. The 4 corners carry matching spandrels drawn in the same camel tone, each filled with split arabesque leaves and cloud bands, so the eye reads a clear frame even from across a large room. Between medallion and spandrels the field is not left empty: it is filled with a dense all-over of Shah Abbas palmettes, serrated saz leaves, rosettes and thin vine scrolls that mirror across the long axis rather than repeating mechanically. The main border runs a continuous vine of large palmettes alternating with rust cartouche blossoms, framed on both sides by guard stripes of small green and blue florets. Close up, the outlining is done in a single dark line that holds each flower separate, which is the detail that separates a workshop Tabriz from a village copy.

A Quiet Ivory Palette With Green, Blue and Rust

The ground is ivory, warmer than white, closer to unbleached cream, and it carries almost the entire surface. Against it the medallion and spandrels are worked in a soft camel to dusty rose brown, a tone that sits halfway between the ivory and the darker accents and keeps the composition from ever looking high contrast. The greens are the character of the rug: a muted sage in the medallion core, a deeper moss in the leaf tips and border florets, cooling the whole palette down. Blues appear in small doses, a pale robin's egg in the guard stripes and a deeper navy in the flower centers, visible in the corner close-up where the little geometric border blossoms alternate blue and green. Rust and brick red are the punctuation, used only in the large border cartouches and in scattered field palmettes, just enough warmth to keep the ivory from reading cold. The silk highlights sit mostly on the pale greens and the rose tones, so the rug shifts noticeably as you walk past it. This is a neutral rug in the best sense, one that will live under oak, walnut or painted furniture without fighting anything.

Tabriz Weaving and the Quality of This Piece

Tabriz sits in the northwest corner of Persia and has been the country's most organized weaving city for centuries, the place where the master designer, the loom and the workshop system all come together. Tabriz fineness is measured in Raj, the count of knots per gereh across the width, and the city's workshops are the only ones in Persia that reliably attempt the highest counts. The evidence here is in the drawing rather than a stated number: the curved outlines run true, the vine scrolls stay even across almost 20 feet of length, and the medallion is perfectly centered on a loom that had to be more than 13 feet wide, which takes several weavers working in coordination for years. The back photograph shows a tight, regular cotton foundation with fine ribbing and hand-tied fringe, the mark of disciplined workshop weaving. Anyone comparing pieces across the Persian Tabriz rugs we carry will find this one unusual for its scale combined with its light palette, since most surviving oversize Tabriz weavings were made in red and navy for European dining rooms.