2'7" x 13'8" Oriental Runner Rug | Light Green Tabriz Mahi Fish Design | Wool and Silk, Brand New

This 2'7" x 13'8" runner was woven for the kind of long corridor that almost nothing covers in a single piece: 164" of length on a narrow 31" width, so a hallway runner this size rarely has to be pieced together or compromised on. The pile is wool and silk over a cotton foundation, knotted entirely by hand, and the drawing follows the strict Tabriz Mahi formula of a fine diamond lattice carrying a column of lobed medallions down the center. It is brand new, never walked on, with crisp ends, hand-tied ivory fringe and a flat, true-lying body, and it ships with our certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

Mahi means fish, and the name describes the small curved leaves that sit in pairs around each rosette inside the lattice, reading like fish circling a pond. The field is built from a tight herati trellis: diamond compartments, each holding an 8 petal rosette or a tiny floral cross, repeated without a break from one end of the runner to the other. Over that lattice runs a column of lobed medallions, each one outlined in ivory and brown, filled with its own miniature lattice, and finished top and bottom with serrated palmette pendants that reach out into the field. Matching quarter spandrels cut the corners at both ends. The main border carries alternating palmettes and rosettes on a scrolling vine, flanked by narrow floral guard stripes on each side, and the drawing stays symmetrical and well resolved at every corner, which is the hardest thing to do on a rug this long and this narrow.

A Light Green and Blush Beige Palette

The field reads as a soft blush beige, pale enough that the lattice itself supplies most of the color: celadon and light green outlines, dusty rose petals, cream rosette centers and small accents of deep garnet red and slate blue that keep the repeat from going flat. Around it the main border shifts to a clear light green, almost sage, and that green band is what frames the whole runner and gives it its character on the floor. The palmettes and vines inside the border are drawn in rust, old rose, ivory and that same dark garnet, with navy leaves tucked in at intervals. The medallions are the lightest areas of all, mostly ivory and pale blush, so they float rather than punch. Silk highlights pick up the light along the rosettes and vine work, shifting the tone as you walk the length of it, and the selvedges are overcast in matching green to finish the edges cleanly.

Hand-Knotted in India

This runner was made in India, which is where most of the world's good contemporary hand-knotted work now comes from, and it is a genuine knotted weave rather than a tufted or machine product: the back shows an even, close knot count, each row beaten down tight, with no slack in the warps over nearly 14 feet of length. A Mahi lattice is unforgiving work, because every diamond and every rosette has to land on the same count or the repeat visibly drifts, and the weaver has held the line here from end to end. As an Oriental rug in a traditional city pattern with a modern, light palette, it suits a long entry hall, a landing or a stair passage, and it sits comfortably alongside the rest of our hand-knotted runner rugs at a size that is genuinely hard to find.