3'2" x 15'6" Persian Tabriz Runner Rug | All-Over Paisley Boteh | Rose Red & Emerald Green, 1980s

Runners this long are woven to order, not woven on speculation, which is why a 15'6" piece in this condition is worth stopping for. This 3'2" x 15'6" Persian Tabriz runner dates to the 1980s and carries an uninterrupted all-over paisley repeat from one end to the other, with no medallion and no filler panel to break the rhythm. The pile is hand-knotted wool on a cotton foundation, still full and lustrous, and the drawing holds its accuracy across all 15 feet, which is the real test on a narrow loom. It reads as a single confident statement in a long hallway runner position, a gallery corridor or a narrow entry. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity documenting origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The field is given entirely to the boteh, the curled cone that the West renamed paisley, set in staggered rows of 5 across the width and repeated the full length of the rug. Each cone is built in layers: a pale blue teardrop core with a small dark rosette at its center, a peach and salmon collar of petals around it, a navy shell outlined in a beaded ivory pearl line, and a green outer shading that separates it from the field. Slender ivory vines link one row to the next and throw off small green leaf sprays, 5 petal flowers and pale buds in the gaps, so the ground never feels empty. The main border reverses the scheme, running a procession of gold and olive boteh, each one facing the same direction, across a solid green ground. Two ivory guard stripes carrying small blue and coral rosettes frame that band, and a fine dark outline closes the design at the selvage. It is a disciplined all-over layout of the type collectors look for in all-over paisley rugs, where the pattern, not a central medallion, does all the work.

A Rose Red Field Framed in Emerald Green

The color is the reason this runner stands out on a showroom floor full of madder reds and indigos. The ground is a rose red that leans toward magenta, clean and even from selvage to selvage, with the natural wool luster giving it a slight shift from rose to deeper raspberry as you walk the length and the pile catches the light from the other direction. Against it the emerald green main border reads almost jewel bright, cooled by the two ivory guard bands so the two strong colors never fight. Inside the cones the palette turns soft: pale sky blue centers, peach and apricot petal collars, cream pearl outlines and small touches of light gray green. Navy anchors every motif and keeps the overall effect from becoming sweet, while the yellow green leaf sprays scattered through the field pick up the olive tones used in the border boteh. Rose, green, navy and cream in one rug is an unusual combination and a deliberate one.

Woven in Tabriz, Northwest Persia

Tabriz sits in the northwest of Persia and has been the country's most organized weaving city for centuries, working on a Raj system that measures knots per gereh across the width and producing everything from solid commercial goods to collector grade workshop pieces. The tight, regular knotting visible on the back of this runner, the crisp beaded outlines around every cone and the fact that the boteh rows stay true across 186 inches all point to a proper workshop loom rather than a village weave. Narrow long formats are the hardest to keep straight, because any drift in tension shows immediately over that distance, and this one lies flat and square. The wool is dense, the pile is full, and the 1980s weaving date puts it in a period when Tabriz workshops still had access to excellent local wool and experienced master weavers. Browse more Persian Tabriz rugs to see the range of the city's output.