6'9" x 10' Indian Tabriz Mahi Rug | Wool and Silk | Red and Ivory

A 6'9" x 10' rug knotted in India in wool and silk, worked in the Tabriz Mahi drawing. Seen from above it reads as a dark red field carrying a fine all-over lattice, a pale oval medallion at the centre, and a wide light border of flowerheads and scrolling vine. The pile is cut low, which is why the small motifs stay legible at floor distance.

The design

The field is filled edge to edge with the herati lattice that gives the Mahi drawing its name: small diamonds outlined in pink and cream, each holding a rosette, with curved leaves (the fish) turning at the corners of every diamond. The medallion is an eight-lobed oval on a grey-taupe ground, ringed by a scalloped cream outline and reducing in stages to a small floral centre. A stepped pendant sits above and below it, and the four corner spandrels repeat the same paler ground so the red field reads as a large diamond floating within the rectangular frame. The main border runs palmettes and round rosettes joined by vine, with several narrow guard stripes, the innermost carrying a row of small triangles.

The colour

The table records beige as the main colour with cream, tan, gold and rust accents, and those are what the borders and medallion give: an ivory main border, a dusty rose-taupe outer stripe, rust in the palmettes and gold in the lines that outline the medallion and pendants. The field itself photographs as a deep red close to burgundy, darker where the pile leans away from the light, and it is that red against the pale medallion and spandrels that carries the rug. Smaller quantities of slate blue and dark green sit inside the rosettes, with white picking out the centres.

The making

This is a hand-knotted rug with a pile of wool and silk, the silk visible where it catches light along the medallion outlines and the lattice diamonds. The back, shown in the photographs, is even and tightly worked, with the pattern reading clearly through to the reverse and cotton fringes finishing both ends. It was knotted in India to the Tabriz Mahi pattern of northwest Persia, and both age and condition are recorded as new.