6'7" x 9'7" Persian Tabriz Rug | Wool | Light Gray

A rectangular rug measuring 6'7" x 9'7", hand-knotted in wool in Persia in the 1950s. Years of use have taken the pile down close to the foundation, and the whole drawing now reads as a pale wash: sand and light grey across the field, with the medallion and the border lines surviving in charcoal. Seen from across a room it looks almost monochrome, and only at close range does the Tabriz drawing resolve into flowers, leaves and lattice. Among our hand-knotted rugs this is one of the quieter pieces.

Design

The field carries a single lobed medallion with a scalloped charcoal outline, an eight-petalled rosette at its centre and a stepped, hooked frame set behind it. Pendants rise and fall from the medallion on the long axis, each ending in a palmette with a fan of narrow leaves. The four corners hold spandrels drawn as bouquets of roses and buds, repeated at a smaller scale in the quarter-corners of the inner field, with loose sprays and single blossoms scattered in the open ground between. Three borders enclose the field: a main band of linked floral cartouches, and on either side of it narrow guards of running rosettes and small diamonds, with a chain of diamond lattice set inside the inner guard along each side.

Colour

The ground is light grey over sand, shading to taupe and a soft biscuit brown where the pile has thinned and the warps show through, which is clearest along the lower border and across the medallion. The outlines are the darkest thing in the rug, a true charcoal and grey that holds the pattern together now that the fill colours have gone pale. Traces of a dull sage green survive in the leaves and in parts of the border cartouches, and there is a faint warm ochre in one or two of the corner bouquets. Nothing in the palette is bright.

Making

Hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation, as the reverse in the last photograph shows, with the knotting fine enough to carry the thin outlines of the medallion cleanly. The table dates it to the 1950s, which places it among our vintage pieces, and the condition is given as very good: low pile, evenly worn, stable. The wear is uniform rather than patchy, the sides and ends are intact, and at 6'7" x 9'7" it falls into the 6x9 to 8x10 range.