6'5" x 9'10" Persian Tabriz Rug | Zirkhaki Vase and Medallion Design | 1970s Collectible

This is a 1970s Persian Tabriz woven in the old Zirkhaki manner, a drawing style that fills the field with vessels, ewers and flowering branches rather than a plain open ground. At 6'5" x 9'10" it sits right in the most usable range of 7 x 10 Persian rugs, large enough to anchor a seating group yet still easy to place. The wool pile is thick, springy and full across the whole surface, the fringes and side cords are sound, and the back reads clean and even with no repairs. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming it is hand-knotted, its origin and its age, which matters on a piece like this where the age and the workshop drawing are a large part of the value.

Design and Motifs

A lobed navy medallion sits at the center, carrying an ivory cartouche filled with green arabesque scrollwork and an 8 petal red rosette at its heart. Around it the red field is populated with drawn objects instead of repeating flowers: covered jars, handled ewers, footed bowls, lidded teapots and slender vases, each one banded in a different set of colors and set among thin flowering stems and small rose heads. The salmon spandrels at all 4 corners repeat the vessel theme on a pale ground, framed by a scalloped turquoise band. The main border runs navy with alternating boteh paisleys, amber palmettes and green shield cartouches, held between narrow guard stripes in soft green and ivory. It is a busy, storytelling composition, and the weaver kept every outline crisp, which is the test of this pattern. If you like tracing when a piece was made, the signs used to date an Oriental rug are all legible here in the palette and the drawing.

A Palette of Red, Navy, Ivory and Turquoise

The field is a deep cochineal red with a slightly cool, wine-toned cast rather than a bright brick. Against it the medallion reads ivory to warm cream, outlined in inky navy that repeats in the main border and in the inner medallion ring. The third color, and the one that gives this rug its personality, is turquoise: a clear pale aqua used for the vases, the scalloped band inside the spandrels and the outer guard stripe, with a second deeper blue-green used on leaves and vessel bodies. Salmon and peach occupy the spandrels and thin outlines, mustard gold runs through the border cartouches and palmettes, and bottle green appears in the scrollwork and small leaf forms. Rose pink, rust orange and cocoa brown show up in the flower heads and finials. In daylight the red and navy dominate and the piece reads formal; under lamplight the turquoise and salmon come forward and it turns noticeably softer and more colorful.

Tabriz Origin and Weaving Quality

Tabriz sits in northwest Persia and has been the country's most productive fine weaving center for centuries, the city where cartoon-based workshop weaving was refined and where the Raj system of counting fineness is still used. Tabriz weavers work on a cotton foundation with a hooked knife, which lets them hold a curved line and turn out drawing this detailed at scale. That control is what you are looking at here: the medallion lobes are symmetrical, the vessel outlines close cleanly, and the border repeats keep their spacing from end to end across 9'10". The wool is good northwest Persian stock, dense and lanolin-rich, and after 50 years the pile is still even with no low spots. It is a solid, well-made workshop piece from a decade when Tabriz was still weaving these old vase patterns properly.