5'2" x 8'3" Indian Tabriz Rug | Wool and Silk | Cream and Grey

A hand-knotted rug of 5'2" x 8'3", woven in India in wool and silk at 400 knots per square inch. The field is cream, filled edge to edge with a fine lattice, and a single lobed medallion in grey-green sits at the centre with a pendant reaching toward each end. Seen from a distance the drawing reads almost as texture, and it is only close up that the individual rosettes and diamond frames separate out.

Design

This is the Mahi, or fish, version of the Tabriz pattern: the ground carries a repeating herati lattice, each small diamond outlined in pale blue and centred on a rosette, with curved leaves lying along the sides like fish around a pool. The medallion is scalloped, with a darker inner cartouche and a narrow rose-pink outline, and the same filler pattern continues inside it at a smaller scale. Quarter medallions fill the four corners of the field on the same grey-green ground. The main border on an ivory ground runs palmettes and serrated leaves between scrolling vine, framed on both sides by guard stripes of small boteh, and the whole rectangular format finishes in a plain cotton kilim band and knotted fringe.

Colour

The ground is an unbleached cream that carries almost all of the drawing. Against it the medallion and spandrels read grey, cooled toward green where the pile turns, while the medallion core goes brown with a mauve cast. The small flowers are madder red and deep burgundy, the leaves a dull green, and outlines drop to near black, with rose-pink used sparingly along the medallion edge and the pendants. Nothing in the palette is loud; the contrast comes from the density of small marks rather than from strong blocks of colour.

Making

Hand-knotted in India on a cotton foundation, with a pile of wool and silk at 400 knots per square inch, which is what allows the herati lattice to be drawn this small without losing its outlines. The silk sits in the flowerheads and the medallion tracery, catching light a half tone brighter than the wool around it. The table dates it to the 2000s and records it as never used, and the pile in the close photographs is full and evenly clipped from end to end, at 5'2" x 8'3".