4'1" x 6' Persian Tabriz Rug | Prayer Arch & Poet Script Design | Excellent Condition

Small rugs usually get simple drawings, because the weaver has less room to work with and most workshops keep their ambitious cartoons for room-size commissions. This one went the other way. Inside 4'1" x 6' the weaver packed a full sanctuary composition: a lobed medallion above, an arched niche with flanking columns below, a flowering vase at the base, and two tall ivory cartouches of woven script running up the sides of the field like the margins of a manuscript page. The wool pile has kept its shine, the ends and sides are original and sound, and the rug lies flat with no ripple. It sits comfortably in the sweet spot of 4x6 Persian rugs, large enough to anchor a reading chair or a bedside, small enough to hang. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity stating origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The field reads as an architectural elevation rather than a repeating pattern. The upper register holds a pointed arch outlined in saffron, filled with a slate blue ground of small scattered blossoms, and centered on a lobed navy medallion whose heart is an ivory rosette. Beneath the arch the drawing turns to a niche in ivory, densely filled with a lattice of stars and small flower heads, flanked by 2 rust columns banded in black and ivory dentil work that read like carved stone. A saffron vase sits at the foot of the niche and sends scrolling stems out to either side, and 2 small shield cartouches in ivory sit low in the field against a near black ground of vines and blossoms. Running up both long sides of the field are narrow ivory panels carrying woven script in a flowing hand, the detail that gives this rug its poet script name. The main border is burgundy, set with alternating light blue medallions that carry paired bird figures and palmette heads, guarded on both sides by light blue minor stripes of vine and rosette.

A Multi Color Palette Built on Slate Blue and Burgundy

The dominant field tone is an unusual dusty slate blue, cool and slightly green in daylight, which is what makes the warm colors read so strongly against it. Deep burgundy carries the main border and the arch spandrels, near black navy fills the medallion and the lower ground, and saffron gold does the outlining work, tracing the arch, the vase and the medallion pendants. Rust and terracotta appear in the columns and in scattered border details, ivory and cream light up the niche, the script panels and the fringe, and the smallest notes are soft pink, pale rose and a muted leaf green in the blossoms and bird figures. It is a genuine multi colored Persian rug rather than a two-tone piece, so it bridges cool rooms and warm rooms equally well, and the wool takes light differently from each direction, shifting the blue toward gray or toward teal as you walk past it.

Tabriz Weaving in North West Persia

Tabriz sits in the far northwest of Persia and has been the country's design capital for centuries, the place where court cartoons were drawn and where the hook-knife weaving technique allows very fine, very accurate work. Tabriz weavers measure fineness in Raj, the number of knots counted across a gereh of roughly 2.75 in, and the whole city is organized around that scale, from commercial grades up to the collector weaves that the best ateliers attempt. What tells you the grade of a piece like this without a number is the drawing itself: the curved sweep of the arch, the unbroken saffron outline, the legible script inside panels barely 2 in wide, and the bird figures rendered small enough to fit inside a border medallion. None of that survives on a coarse weave. The back shows an even, tight knot line over a cotton foundation, with straight selvages and original flat-woven ends, the signature of a disciplined workshop rather than a village loom.