5'9" x 8'9" Wool & Silk Oriental Rug | Burgundy Mahi Fish Design | Brand New, Never Used

This is a brand new, never used hand-knotted rug in the Mahi (fish) design, woven in wool with silk highlights on a cotton foundation. At 5'9" x 8'9" it sits right in the most usable 6x9 area rug size, large enough to carry a seating group or a 6 chair table and still show its borders. The drawing is tight, the lattice is small-scale and even across the whole field, and the silk is used sparingly where it matters most: the flower heads, the medallion fill and the thin outlines that separate one color from the next. As a hand-knotted Oriental rug it ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming the hand-knotted construction, the wool and silk pile and the measurements shown above.

Design and Motifs

The field is a continuous Mahi lattice, the pattern Western dealers call herati or fish: a small diamond grid, a rosette at the center of each compartment, and 4 slim lanceolate leaves curling around it like fish circling a pond. Nothing interrupts the rhythm, which is the whole point of this design, and the detail photo shows how many separate flower types sit inside a grid that small. A stepped diamond medallion holds the center, drawn with a lobed cartouche at its core and a ring of paisley and palmette forms inside the salmon ground. Two pendants reach out along the long axis, and the field is closed off by wide beige spandrels at the 4 corners filled with the same small flowers plus a scrolling cloudband outline. The main border runs a vine of palmettes, rosettes and curved paisleys, flanked on both sides by narrow guard stripes of the repeating boteh and bead motif seen in the corner and fringe photos.

Burgundy, Salmon and Beige in Detail

The ground is a deep wine burgundy, closer to oxblood than to bright red, and it reads darker at an angle and warmer when the light crosses the pile, which is visible if you compare the straight-on photo with the angled showroom view. Against it the lattice flowers come up in soft salmon, peach, ivory, pale gold and small amounts of olive and sage green, with black outlining used in very thin lines to keep the shapes crisp. The medallion is the lightest element: a salmon and blush ground that fades toward cream at the edges, outlined in near-black and filled with brick red and brown flower heads. The spandrels and the guard stripes carry the same beige to ivory range, so the corners balance the medallion and stop the dark field from feeling heavy. Where the silk sits, mainly in the flower centers and the medallion, the color shifts and brightens as you walk around the rug.

Origin and Weaving Quality

This rug was made in China, in the workshop tradition that has specialized for decades in fine hand-knotted reproductions of classical patterns, the Mahi lattice among them. It is not a machine-made piece and not tufted: every knot is tied by hand onto a cotton warp, the ends are finished as hand-knotted fringe, and the ruler photo gives you a sense of the knot count across the back and the fineness of the pile. Judge this kind of weave the way you would judge any fine rug, by whether the small motifs stay legible and the lines stay straight, and here they do: the grid does not wander, the medallion outline is a clean curve, and the border turns the corners correctly rather than cutting a motif in half. The wool is dense and low-cut, with silk worked in as accent rather than as the body of the pile, which keeps the surface tough enough for real use while still giving the sheen you see in the detail shots.