6'6" x 10'1" Wool & Silk Mahi Rug | Tabriz Herati Fish Design | Made in India

This 6'6" x 10'1" hand-knotted rug is a careful, disciplined reading of the Mahi design, the fish pattern that the Tabriz workshops built their reputation on, executed here in wool with silk highlights through the medallion, spandrels and border flowerheads. It is a genuinely new piece, never walked on, and the pile still has the full height and dry, lustrous handle you only get before a rug has been lived with. At just over 65 square feet it sits right in the useful 7x10 area rug range: large enough to carry a sofa and two chairs, small enough to move. Every rug we ship leaves Freeport with a certificate of authenticity confirming that it is hand-knotted, along with its measurements, materials and design.

Design and Motifs

The field is covered edge to edge in the Herati repeat, also called mahi or the fish pattern: a small diamond lattice, each cell holding a rosette flanked by 4 curved leaves that read as fish circling a pond. The scale here is tight, so the lattice becomes texture rather than pattern from standing height, and only resolves into individual flowerheads when you crouch. A lobed ivory medallion sits dead center with a shaded slate blue inner cartouche and a stepped 8 petal rosette at its core, finished top and bottom with slim ivory pendants. The 4 corners are cut as large scalloped spandrels outlined in cream vine, with the field inside them dropping to near navy so the shape reads clearly. The border system runs 5 bands deep: a wide ivory main border of palmettes, serrated leaves and turning vine, a camel and brown guard stripe, a slate blue reciprocal band, and thin red and navy minor stripes that hold the whole frame tight. The drawing stays symmetrical and precise on all 4 sides, and the corners resolve properly, which is the first thing to check on any Mahi.

Color: Deep Pom Red, Ivory and Olive

The ground is a deep rich pom red, a cool blue-leaning red rather than a brick or orange one, and it darkens noticeably toward the spandrels and the outer field where the lattice outlines are drawn in near black navy. Against that, the ivory of the medallion and the main border is bright and creamy rather than white, and it does the heavy lifting: it lights the center of the rug and frames the whole piece. Inside the Herati cells the palette opens up into olive green, soft camel and brown, a muted slate blue, and small touches of salmon and pure white on individual petals, which is what keeps a dense all-over field from going flat. The silk content shows most in the medallion and in the flowerheads along the border, where the light catches and the same color reads two ways depending on which end of the rug you stand at. The selvage is bound in solid red, the fringe is natural ivory cotton, and overall this reads as one of the more versatile deep red and burgundy rugs: warm on dark wood, grounding against navy or charcoal upholstery.

Made in India: Weave and Quality

This piece was woven in India, and we say that plainly because India is where most of the world's best contemporary hand-knotted work is produced today. The weaving centers there took on the classical city designs decades ago and now execute them at a level that would have been hard to find outside a workshop, which is exactly what this rug demonstrates: the Mahi lattice holds its count across the full 10'1" length without drifting, the medallion outline stays smooth through its lobes, and the back shows small, even, tightly packed knots on a cotton foundation. The pile is wool blended with silk, dense underfoot with a clear sheen, and the clipping is low enough for the fine drawing to register. If you are weighing this against a piece from Persia, the distinction is origin and price rather than design vocabulary, and our guide on Persian rugs vs Oriental rugs lays out where the real differences sit. For a buyer who wants the Mahi look, at this size, in perfect never-used condition, this is the sensible way to get it.