6'8" x 10'1" Indian Mahi Tabriz Rug | Wool and Silk | Black and Ivory

A 6'8" x 10'1" rectangular rug knotted in India in the Mahi Tabriz design, with a pile of wool and silk. From a few steps away it reads as a dark field with one large pale medallion floating at the centre, and only close up does the field resolve into thousands of tiny diamonds, each holding a flower head no bigger than a fingernail.

Design

The field carries the herati repeat that gives the Mahi design its name, small lozenges enclosing rosettes with curved fish leaves set either side, worked edge to edge across the black ground. At the centre sits a round medallion built from ring after ring of scalloped petals, outlined in a pale line and filled with the same miniature flower work, with a small cartouche at its core and a notched pendant above and below. Two hooked finials break out into the field on the long axis. Ivory corner spandrels, scalloped to echo the medallion, sweep in from all four corners and turn the dark field into a broad diamond. The main border is black, set with alternating palmettes and rosettes joined by a thin vine, and is held between narrow ivory and camel guard stripes patterned with small blossoms, as seen in the close view of the border in image 8.

Colour

The ground is a true black, dense enough that the drawing on it looks like light rather than paint. Against it the medallion and spandrels run through camel and biscuit to ivory, with pockets of deep brown and oxblood inside the petal rings. The small flower heads in the field are rust and terracotta, lifted here and there by sage and a sharp pale green, and by flecks of chalk white and light blue that read as scattered points across the dark ground. The border takes the same rust and sage against black, so the colour at the edge answers the colour at the centre.

Making

The rug is hand-knotted, with a wool pile carrying silk in the highlights, which is what gives the medallion and the ivory scallops their change of sheen as the light moves across them. The back, shown folded in image 9 and rolled in image 10, is tight and even, the pattern legible knot by knot, and the ends finish in plain ivory fringe. It is a new rug in perfect condition, a traditional drawing worked by Indian weavers from the Tabriz Mahi repertoire.