5'10" x 9' Chinese Tabriz Rug | Wool and Silk | Ivory and Tan

A 5'10" x 9' rectangular rug knotted by hand in China to a Tabriz drawing, with a pile of wool and silk. At a glance it reads as an ivory field covered edge to edge in small flowers, held inside a wide tan border. The drawing is fine and the colours are kept low, so the pattern fills the whole surface without any one part of it shouting.

Design

There is no medallion. The field is an all-over system of thin brown vines that branch, cross and meet again, carrying palmettes, round rosettes and open lotus heads, with small five-petal blossoms and pointed leaves filling the ground between them. The pattern is drawn in mirrored halves down the length of the rug, so motifs repeat left to right but shift as the vines travel up the field. The main border runs a continuous vine of large serrated palmettes alternating with smaller flower sprays and tulip-like buds. It is flanked on both sides by a gold-olive guard stripe of meandering blossom, and those in turn by narrow ivory, navy and white lines that separate border from field cleanly. The rug finishes in plain ivory selvedges and knotted ivory fringes at both ends.

Colour

The ground is an unbleached ivory, close to cream, and the border is a soft tan that carries a distinct rose cast where the light falls on the pile. Against those two grounds the flower heads are worked in apricot, burgundy, a dusty pink and a gold-yellow, with leaves in a deep bottle green that darkens almost to black at the edges. Small touches of slate blue appear in the flower centres and in the guard stripes, which is what keeps the warm colours from settling into a single tone. The overall effect is quiet: the contrast lives in the drawing rather than in the dyes.

Making

Hand-knotted in China in wool and silk, the silk showing as sheen in the flower heads and vines where the rolled pile catches light. The pile is cut low, which is why the thin outlines of the vines stay legible, and the reverse shows the pattern reading clearly knot by knot. The table records the rug as new in both age and condition, and the photographs bear that out: full pile across the field, even edges and intact fringes. It sits alongside the rest of our hand-knotted stock as a Chinese rug working a Persian town design, not a Persian rug.