5' x 7' Persian Tabriz Heriz Rug | Wool and Silk | Ivory and Coral

A rectangular rug of 5' x 7', hand-knotted in Persia with a pile of wool and silk. The field is open ivory, the centre carries a coral star medallion, and a wide salmon border runs around all four sides. From a few feet away it reads as one pale, warm rug with a single strong figure at its heart.

The design

The medallion is the eight-pointed star of Heriz drawing, set out with the closer detail of Tabriz workshop weaving. Within the coral star sits a small ivory rosette ringed with tulips, and each point carries a leaf spray or a pair of flowerheads rather than a block of flat colour. Pendants run off the top and bottom into hexagonal cartouches holding three small rosettes apiece, and stepped corner brackets close the field at each end. Between them the ground is filled with angular vine: stems that turn at right angles, serrated leaves, and small flowers scattered along the branches. The border is built in three bands, a salmon main stripe of palmettes and rosettes joined by curling leaves, with an ivory guard stripe of alternating boteh and dark-centred flowerheads on either side of it. Both ends finish in a narrow woven panel scattered with tiny flowers above the white fringe.

The colour

The field is ivory, a cream that shifts toward oatmeal where the light crosses the pile. Against it the medallion and border are coral, close to terracotta along the outlines and softening to salmon across the open ground of the border. The drawing is picked out in a soft grey-green, in rose pink, in a deeper madder red used for outlines, and in a navy so dark it reads almost black in the vine work. Nothing here is high contrast. The whole rug sits within a narrow band of warm, pale tones, with the navy lines doing the work of holding the pattern in place.

The weave

Hand-knotted in a pile of wool and silk, with the silk worked into parts of the drawing, which is why the leaves and flowerheads take the light differently from the ground around them in the close photographs. The back is even and fine enough that the small boteh of the guard stripes stay legible from behind. The table dates the rug to the 2000s and records it as unused, and the photographs agree: full pile height, no thinning at the corners, both ends and fringes intact.