6'2" x 8'11" Persian Tabriz Rug | Ivory Field Floral Medallion | Approx. 400 KPSI, Never Used

This is a 1980s workshop Tabriz that spent its life rolled and stored rather than walked on, and it shows: the pile stands full and even from end to end, the ivory has not greyed, and the fringe is still original and uncut. It measures 6'2" x 8'11", an easy and useful proportion that sits neatly among 6 x 9 Persian rugs, and it is knotted at roughly 400 knots per square inch, which in Tabriz terms is 60 Raj, the point where the drawing stops being approximate and the curves start behaving like ink on paper. The pile is wool with a silk touch used on the highlights, so the lighter leaves and tendrils catch the light a half step brighter than the ground around them. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The centre is a round, deeply layered medallion built in rings: a rust core holding a small rosette, then a ring of curled paisley forms facing outward, then a sage green lobed edge, then a soft gold outer lip that fades back into the field. Above and below it sit matching pendants with serrated palmette crowns. The field is not left open around them. It is filled with a continuous arabesque of split leaves, curling saz foliage and large blossoms drawn on a wandering vine, mirrored across both axes so the two halves answer each other exactly. The main border carries alternating rosettes and palmettes on a turning vine, framed by four narrower guard stripes, the outermost of which runs a small running scroll in green on ivory. The way the corners resolve, with the border pattern turning cleanly rather than being cut off, is the tell of a drawn cartoon and a patient weaver.

Ivory Ground with Sage Green, Rust and Blue

The palette here is unusually quiet for a Tabriz of this fineness. The ground is ivory with a warm cream cast, and every other colour is keyed to it rather than against it. Sage and olive green do the structural work: the main border, the medallion's outer lobes and many of the larger leaves in the field. Rust appears in measured doses, in the medallion core, in the small rosette hearts scattered through the field and in the palmette tips along the border. Muted blue, from a dusty powder tone to a deeper slate, outlines the flower heads and gives the drawing its definition, while brown and soft gold shade the leaves so the vine reads as three dimensional. There is no high contrast anywhere, no black outline, no hot red. The result is a rug that lightens a room instead of dominating it and that works with pale walls, natural wood and both warm and cool upholstery.

Tabriz Weaving and the 60 Raj Standard

Tabriz sits in northwest Persia and has been the commercial and technical centre of Persian weaving for centuries, the city where the cartoon-drawn curvilinear style was refined and then exported to the rest of the country. Tabriz weavers count fineness in Raj, the number of knots across a gereh of about 2.75 inches: 40 Raj is ordinary commercial work, 50 is fine, and 60 Raj, roughly 400 knots per square inch, is collector grade and the level at which a floral arabesque like this one can be drawn without the curves breaking into steps. The rug is knotted on a cotton foundation with a firm, flat handle and a low, dense clip that leaves the pattern crisp rather than blurred. Look at the back and the knot rows are even and tightly packed, with no slack areas and no abrash, which is what you expect from a city workshop rather than a village loom.