2'9" x 16'7" Persian Tabriz Runner | Repeating Ivory Medallions | 60 Raj Wool & Silk

This is a workshop-grade Tabriz runner at a length most weavers never attempt: 2'9" x 16'7" of unbroken drawing, knotted at roughly 400 knots per square inch on a cotton foundation with wool and silk pile. Five ivory medallions march down a maroon field, each one linked to the next by a gold arabesque, and the silk in the highlights catches the light differently as you walk the length of it. The back, shown in the final photograph with its original weaver's tag, is tight and even from selvedge to selvedge, which is what holds a runner of this proportion straight over time. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity recording origin, materials and knot count.

Design and Motifs

The layout is the classic Tabriz medallion repeat adapted to a narrow format. Full ivory lozenge medallions alternate with smaller ivory cartouches, and each large medallion carries a gray-green center rosette ringed by coral and blue blossom clusters, gold acanthus leaves and fine black outlining that gives the drawing its crispness. Between the medallions the field fills with slender vines, hyacinth sprays, split palmettes and small rosettes, all of it curvilinear, none of it repeating mechanically from one panel to the next. Navy corner spandrels break the field at intervals with scrolling cloudband forms. The main border is a navy ground carrying alternating ivory palmettes and rose flower heads, flanked by pale rose guard stripes and a narrow ivory minor border, which is exactly the kind of triple-band framing that keeps a 16'7" run from looking repetitive underfoot.

A Maroon Field With Ivory, Navy and Gold

The field is a deep maroon that reads with a distinct magenta cast in raking light, closer to raspberry in the close-up photographs than to a plain brick red, and the silk content is what pushes it there. Against that ground the medallions sit in warm ivory and cream, edged in old gold and antique brass tones, with the leafwork in the same gold running out into the field. Accent color does the rest of the work: rose pink and coral in the rosettes, sage and forest green in the leaves, sky blue and cobalt in the hyacinths, and a black outline that sharpens every shape. The navy border anchors the whole thing and gives the runner a dark frame that grounds the brightness of the field. It is a warm, saturated palette, at home with cream walls, dark wood and brass hardware.

Tabriz Weaving and the Raj Count

Tabriz sits in northwest Persia and has been the commercial and technical center of Persian weaving for centuries, the city where the hook-knife weaving method and the Raj counting system both took hold. Raj measures knots per gereh of about 2.75 inches across the width: 40 Raj is commercial work, 50 is fine, and 60 Raj, roughly 400 knots per square inch, is where a rug stops being decorative goods and starts being a collector piece. This runner is woven at that 60 Raj level, which is why the vine scrolls stay curved rather than stepped and why the tiny blossom heads hold their shape at half an inch across. A narrow 16'7" format also demands absolute consistency in tension, since any drift shows immediately in a rug this long. Laid down a long entry corridor or an upstairs landing, it is the sort of piece that makes a hallway runner the best-dressed surface in the house.