4'6" x 6'6" Silk Oriental Rug | Tabriz Design Black Floral Medallion | Brand New

A 100% silk pile on a cotton foundation, hand-knotted entirely by hand in China to the drawing of the Tabriz school, this 4'6" x 6'6" piece is the kind of small, very fine weave people buy once and keep in the family. The pile is cut short so the drawing stays crisp, and because every knot is silk the colour shifts as you walk past it: the black field reads deep ink from one end of the room and smoky charcoal from the other. It is brand new and has never been on a floor, with perfect selvedges, even ends and clean white fringe. If you have been comparing silk 5x7 rugs on sheen alone, handle this one, because the lustre here comes from the fibre and the short clip rather than from a wash. It ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming the hand-knotted construction, the silk pile and the measurements above.

Design and Motifs

The layout is the classical lobed medallion formula handled with real discipline. At the centre sits an ivory 8 petal rosette holding a red and navy core, ringed by 12 blue and ivory boteh finials that point outward like rays. That medallion floats on a large black cartouche-shaped panel scattered with naturalistic roses, buds and feathery leaves on thin brown vines, with a small ivory pendant lozenge set at each side. A saffron gold inner field surrounds the panel and carries its own delicate vine of tiny red blossoms and soft blue bell flowers, closed by ivory cornerpieces. From there the design steps outward through 5 border bands: a slender red guard with gold tracery, a navy band of alternating cream and pink palmettes, a salmon band of scrolling vine, and the wide black main border where large pink cabbage roses alternate with ivory and olive cartouches. All 4 corners resolve into big ivory and burgundy star medallions, and the pattern meets itself cleanly where the corners turn, which is the first thing to check on a rug drawn this densely.

Colour: Black Field, Cream Light, Red and Soft Blue

Black dominates and does the structural work, both in the central panel and again in the wide outer border, so the rug anchors a room the way a dark hardwood floor does. Against it the palette is warm rather than cold: cream and ivory carry the medallion, the cornerpieces and the small cartouches, deep red and burgundy fill the star corner medallions and the narrow guard stripes, and a soft powder blue appears in the boteh finials, the bell flowers and the little rosette centres. Salmon and terracotta run through the middle border band, saffron gold lights the inner field and the outer fringe edge, and olive green leaves tie every flower head back to its vine. The pinks are graded across at least 3 tones, from pale blush on the open rose petals to a dark rose at the heart, which is why the roses look rounded rather than flat. Under lamplight the silk pushes the creams and golds forward; in daylight the black and navy read deeper and the pinks cool slightly.

Origin and Weaving Quality

This rug was woven in China, where the best workshops have spent decades mastering silk weaving and the classical city layouts, and it follows the Tabriz design tradition: a strict medallion and corner scheme, curved vine work, and borders drawn in clean concentric bands. Knowing what an Oriental rug is, and how origin, design name and material are three separate questions, matters here: the design is Tabriz, the weave is Chinese workshop, and the material is pure silk. The back, visible in the final photograph, shows a tight fine grid with the pattern legible knot for knot, which is only possible at a high knot count, and it is that density that allows motifs as small as the blue bell flowers and the rose buds to be drawn at all. At 4'6" x 6'6" it suits a seating area in front of a sofa, the foot of a bed, a study, or a wall, since silk pieces of this fineness are often hung and lit rather than walked on.