6' x 6' Chinese Tabriz Round Rug | Silk | Red and Navy

A round rug measuring Width: 6' x Length: 6', hand-knotted in China with a silk pile and worked to a Tabriz design. At a glance it reads as a deep red disc with a pale medallion at the centre and a dark blue band running all the way round the edge, the whole thing finished with a long ivory fringe. The silk gives the surface a shift in tone as it turns, so the red looks near black-cherry from one side and bright carmine from the other. It sits in the 4x6 to 6x9 range, and among the rugs we carry it is one of the few circular pieces at this level of fineness.

The design

The centre is a round medallion on an ivory ground, built from a small rosette at its heart and rings of feathered leaves and split palmettes, framed by a navy collar with pale pink and cream flowerheads. Curved pendants project from it into the field at eight points. The field itself carries a dense floral vine, thin ochre stems turning out into pink cabbage roses, cream palmettes, blue carnations and small serrated leaves, all mirrored across the circle so the pattern repeats around the centre. Four narrow guard stripes of beige with strings of little rosettes enclose the wide navy main border, which runs a continuous arabesque of gilt scrollwork, cream cartouches and clusters of crimson blossom. A small woven cartouche sits in the outer guard stripe, visible above the red outermost band.

The colour

The ground is a deep red, close to garnet in the shade and lifting to cherry where the light runs down the pile. Against it the main border is a very dark navy, almost black until the light reaches the flowers inside it. The medallion and the guard stripes are ivory and warm beige, which keeps the red and the navy from meeting directly. The drawing is picked out in rose pink, soft blue and gold, with green in two registers, a grey-toned sage on the leaf tips and a stronger olive in the border vines.

The making

Hand-knotted with a silk pile, the weave is fine enough to hold the small flowerheads and the fringed leaf edges clearly, as the reverse in the last photograph shows. Silk takes dye deeply and reflects light along its length, which is why the same red reads as two colours depending on where the viewer stands. The rug was made in China, where workshops have long woven classical Persian city patterns such as this Tabriz medallion scheme, and it is listed as new and in perfect condition, with the pile full and the ivory fringe untrimmed.