6'6" x 9'8" Indian Tabriz Mahi Rug | Wool and Silk | Burgundy and Ivory

A 6'6" x 9'8" carpet knotted in India, with a pile of wool and silk. At a glance it reads as a very dark field, burgundy going almost to black, covered corner to corner in a small repeating lattice, with one light medallion at the centre and a broad ivory border of scrolling leaves and palmettes. The rectangular shape is true, the edges are bound in plain red and both ends finish in white fringe.

The design

The pattern is the Mahi Tabriz, sometimes called the fish design, and it is drawn here at a small scale: each unit of the lattice is a diamond holding a rosette, with two curved leaves set either side of it. That repeat runs unbroken across the field and continues, at the same scale but on a pale camel ground, inside the large scalloped medallion that fills the middle of the rug. At the medallion's heart sits a black cartouche with a rose-brown floral spray, four leaf tips reaching out to the corners. Narrow pendants extend above and below, each ending in a small ivory palmette, and the two long sides of the field carry matching flowerheads on ivory. The dark field turns at the corners into spandrels outlined with a thin ivory line. The main border is ivory, carrying a vine of split leaves, curled paisley forms and open palmettes, and it is held between taupe-brown minor stripes of small flowers and a sawtooth guard.

The colour

The ground is burgundy, deep enough that it reads as near-black from a distance and only shows its red in raking light, as in the low-angle photographs. Against it the lattice is picked out in ivory, rust and a dull olive, with occasional slate-blue rosettes that keep the repeat from looking mechanical. The medallion ground is a warm camel, several shades lighter than the field, so the outline of the scalloped shape is clear even though the drawing inside it is the same. The border is the lightest part of the rug, a clean ivory that throws the burgundy and brick-red of the leafwork forward, and the brown guard stripes step the eye down from that ivory to the dark red selvage.

The making

It is hand-knotted, row by row on a loom, and the fineness of the mahi repeat is a direct consequence of the knot count the weaver was working to: the small diamonds hold their shape without blurring. The pile is wool with silk, and the silk sits where the light catches it, in the flowerheads of the medallion and the paler passages of the border. The rug is new and in perfect condition, with full pile, even edges and no restoration.