5'8" x 7'11" Indian Tabriz Mahi Rug | Wool and Silk | Ivory and Red

A rectangular rug measuring 5'8" x 7'11", hand-knotted in India in wool and silk. The field is a sandy beige carrying a very small repeating pattern, with a lobed medallion at the centre and a wide cream border around the whole. Seen from across a room it reads as a quiet neutral; up close it resolves into several thousand small flowerheads and diamonds.

Design

This is the Tabriz Mahi pattern, the one named for the fish: a dense herati lattice of diamonds, each framed by four curved leaves with a rosette at the centre, running corner to corner across the field without a break. Over that lattice sits a stepped, lobed medallion outlined in cream, with a narrow pendant reaching toward each end and matching quarter medallions in the four corners, their outlines traced in the same pale line. The main border carries palmettes and eight-pointed rosettes on a cream ground, linked by a thin vine, and is flanked by taupe guard stripes of small flowers and a reciprocal saw-tooth edge at the selvedge.

Colour

The ground is sandy beige shading toward ivory, and the lattice over it is picked out in dark red, navy blue and taupe, with cream used for the outlines that separate medallion from field. Inside the medallion and the corner spandrels the taupe deepens and the navy clusters, so those areas read darker than the open field and the drawing stands clear of it. The reds are brick rather than crimson, and the silk in the pile catches light along the outlines so the medallion edge looks a shade brighter than the wool around it.

Weave and material

Hand-knotted in India with a pile of wool and silk, the knotting fine enough to carry the herati pattern at the small scale the Mahi drawing requires. The ends finish in plain cream fringe and the sides are overcast in red. Condition is new and perfect, with full pile throughout, and it joins the rest of our hand-knotted stock as one of the smaller room sizes.