13' x 19'9" Persian Tabriz Rug | Wool and Silk | Oversize

A carpet from Persia measuring 13' x 19'9", with a deep red field carrying an allover floral ground and a navy medallion set at the centre. The drawing follows the Tabriz manner: fine, evenly spaced, densely filled. What makes it worth a second look is the birds. They are worked in everywhere among the vines, pairs of them facing each other, long-tailed and drawn in cream and gold, and they run into the main border as well.

The design

The centre is a round medallion on a navy ground, its innermost rosette on ivory, ringed by green leaf forms and small pink blossoms, with a pendant finial reaching towards each end. Around it the field is filled edge to edge with palmettes, rosettes, feathery serrated leaves and thin scrolling vines, no part of the red left empty for long. The corner spandrels repeat the medallion's navy with a softer grey-green infill. The main border is navy, carrying large polychrome palmettes and perched birds, and it is framed on both sides by a light blue guard stripe of small rosettes and, outside that, a narrow ivory meander.

The colour

The field is a true madder red, slightly cooler and deeper in the border ground where it meets the navy, which is dark enough to read nearly black in the photographs until the light catches it. Against those two the drawing carries an olive and moss green, a chalky ivory used for the bird bodies and the medallion centre, and a clear rose pink that shows up in almost every flower head. Small quantities of mustard, orange and mid-brown break up the leafwork. The pale blue of the guard stripes is the one light note running the full way round, and it keeps the two dark grounds from running together.

The making

Hand-knotted in Persia in the 1980s, which places it among the semi-antique pieces rather than the new ones. The pile is wool and silk, the silk used for highlights: the sheen shows clearly on the ivory and green flower heads where the pile is rolled back. The reverse is tightly and regularly knotted, with the pattern legible on the back. The format is rectangular, the selvedges are sound, the ivory fringes are full at both ends and the condition is given as perfect.