3' x 10' Persian Tabriz Runner | Ivory & Cantaloupe Floral Medallions | Wool & Silk Pile

This is a brand new, never used Persian Tabriz runner measuring 3' x 10', hand-knotted in wool with silk worked through the flowers and scrollwork. The pile stands at a low 1/4", which is what lets the drawing stay this crisp over a narrow 36" width, and the reverse shows an even, tightly packed knot line on a cotton ground. Three linked medallions run the length of an ivory field, each one framed by soft blue arabesques and rose palmettes, with a cantaloupe main border carrying the pattern to the selvages. Long, narrow rugs of this quality are made in far smaller numbers than room sizes, and a piece this fine reads as a decorative object rather than a floor filler. It ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The layout is a classic Tabriz curvilinear floral, repeated 3 times down the runner so the eye travels rather than settles. Each medallion is a rounded rose and coral rosette set inside pale blue cloud-band scrolls, with small leaf-tipped pendants reaching toward the next medallion. Between them the ivory ground is filled with split palmettes, open carnations, serrated acanthus leaves and thin vines that curl back on themselves without ever crossing clumsily. The corners of every panel resolve into spandrel-like sprays, so the runner reads as a series of complete small rugs rather than a cut length of repeat. A narrow rust outline separates the field from the wide cantaloupe main border, where big curling boteh-shaped leaves alternate with flower heads, and 2 thin guard stripes of vine and rosette close the composition on both sides.

Ivory Ground and Cantaloupe Palette

The field is a warm ivory, closer to unbleached cream than white, and it carries the silk-highlighted drawing without any glare. Against it the palette is deliberately soft: cantaloupe and salmon in the border and the medallion centers, dusty rose in the rosettes, and a chalky soft blue that does most of the structural work in the scrolls and cloud bands. Sage green leaves and a few rust-brown vine lines keep the whole thing from going too sweet, while small points of deep red and charcoal in the flower hearts give the pattern its definition from standing height. Where the silk is used, mainly in the petals and the leaf tips, the color shifts as you walk past and the highlights lift out of the wool. This is a light, warm colorway that sits comfortably on oak and pale stone, as the parquet in the photographs shows.

Tabriz Weaving and the Quality of the Weave

Tabriz in northwest Persia has been the country's most organized weaving city for centuries, and its workshops built their reputation on fineness measured in Raj, the number of knots across a gereh of about 2.75 inches. That system exists because Tabriz drawing depends on a high knot count: curved stems, round rosettes and cloud bands only stay smooth when the grid is fine enough to hide the steps, and you can see that here in the unbroken curl of the border leaves. The weave on this runner is tight and regular front and back, the selvages are clean, and the low clipped pile is typical of workshop rather than village production. At 3' x 10' it was woven for a corridor, and a fine Tabriz is one of the few things worth putting in a hallway, where the wool and silk surface takes traffic and still shows its color.