6' x 9' Silk Oriental Rug | Tabriz Design Star Medallion | New, Hand-Knotted in China

This is a brand new 6' x 9' hand-knotted silk rug woven in China in the classic Tabriz drawing style, and it is the kind of piece that changes character every time you walk past it. The pile is 100% silk, so the ruby red ground reads dark and velvety from one direction and glows almost wine-bright from the other, while the pale star medallion floats in the center like a dome seen from below. The scale is the most usable one we sell, which makes it an easy fit for shoppers browsing 6 x 9 area rugs who want silk rather than wool. It has never been on a floor, and every rug we ship leaves with a certificate of authenticity documenting its size, material and weave.

Design and Motifs

The center is a large round star medallion built from concentric rings of small cusped cartouches that radiate out from a tiny rosette at the exact middle, the dome pattern Tabriz workshops made famous. Around it the field is not left open: it is packed with an all-over lattice of scrolling vines, lotus palmettes, serrated leaves and small budded flowers, drawn with curved lines rather than the angular geometry of village work. The four corners carry matching floral spandrels that tie the medallion into the frame. The main ivory border runs a repeating sequence of palmettes and arched blossoms, flanked on both sides by narrow guard stripes of running vine and a fine meander outer stripe. The back, visible in the final photograph, shows a tight, even knot grid with the pattern reading almost as clearly from behind as it does from the front.

A Ruby Red Field Cooled by Ivory, Blue and Peach

Color is where the silk earns its price. The ground is a deep ruby red that leans toward garnet in shadow and toward true crimson under lamplight, and it is laid down evenly across the whole 9 feet with no abrash streaking. Against it the vinework is picked out in light blue, soft sage and moss green, warm cream and ivory, with occasional dark navy outlines that keep the flowers from blurring into the red. The medallion itself is the quiet part of the rug: pale blue-grey outer rings step inward to a peach and blush-toned core, with ivory highlights and a small green and red rosette at the center. The border reverses the balance entirely, an ivory ground carrying peach palmettes, powder blue rosettes and ochre leaf forms, which frames the red field and stops the rug from reading heavy. Reds, blues and peaches in one piece make it easy to pull into a room, and shoppers working from a palette can browse more red and burgundy rugs from the same direction.

Chinese Silk Weaving in the Tabriz Tradition

China has been weaving silk pile to classical Near Eastern cartoons for decades, and the best Chinese workshops reproduce the Tabriz medallion format with real discipline: fine knotting, accurate curvilinear drawing and clean color separation on motifs only a few knots wide. That is exactly what this piece shows. The knot count is high enough that the small cartouches inside the medallion hold their outlines and the vine tips stay sharp, which is only possible on a tightly woven silk pile over a cotton foundation. Sold here as an Oriental rug rather than a Persian one, it gives you the look and the light of a fine silk medallion carpet, honestly labeled as made in China, in a size and price bracket that a comparable Persian silk piece simply does not reach.