6' x 9'7" Persian Herati Mahi Rug | Wool | Navy and Ivory

A rectangular rug of 6' x 9'7", hand-knotted in Persia with a wool pile. The field is a deep indigo blue covered edge to edge in small flowering detail, and the whole thing is framed by a wide ivory border carrying a dark vine. Seen from across a room it reads as navy and cream; up close the field breaks into reds, salmon and pale grey-green.

Design

The field is worked in the Herati Mahi pattern: a fine lattice of vines dividing the ground into compartments, each holding a rosette flanked by a pair of curved lancet leaves, the shape that gives the mahi (fish) pattern its name. Between them sit serrated palmettes and small eight-point star rosettes, all repeating without a medallion and without interruption from one end to the other. The main border is ivory, with an undulating navy vine linking dark burgundy palmettes and pale blue leaf sprays, and it is held between narrow guard stripes of small reciprocal blossoms on a red-brown ground. The outermost edge is a plain navy selvage, and both ends finish in long ivory fringe.

Colour

The ground is a saturated navy, close to indigo in flat light and nearly black where the pile lies away from the camera. Against it the flowerheads run from a cool madder red to a brighter carmine, with a good deal of salmon and tan in between, and the leaves are a soft grey-green that keeps the field from reading as purely red and blue. The border is ivory, warm rather than white, and because the vine on it is drawn in the same navy as the field the two parts of the rug lock together rather than separating into stripes. Small black dots outline many of the rosettes and sharpen the whole repeat.

The making

Hand-knotted in Persia with a wool pile, dated in the table to the 1980's, and listed in perfect condition. The pile is even across the field in the photographs, the drawing of the repeat holds its line from border to border, and the selvages and both fringed ends are intact. The back, visible in the final photograph alongside the dealer tag and tape measure, shows a clear, regular knot grid.