6' x 9' Wool and Silk Mahi Fish Tabriz Design Rug | Black Herati Field | Brand New, Made in India

This is a brand new, never used hand-knotted rug in the classic Mahi fish layout, woven in India with a wool and silk pile on a cotton foundation. The black field is covered edge to edge in the tiny diamond and rosette lattice that gives the design its name, and the drawing stays clean right through the 4 corners, which is the hardest part of the pattern to resolve at this scale. At 6' x 9' it covers a seating group or a standard dining table without crowding the walls, and the silk in the pile catches light along the medallion and the fish heads as you walk around it. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming that it is a genuine hand-knotted piece.

Design and Motifs

The field is a continuous Herati lattice, known as mahi, the fish pattern: a small diamond, a central rosette, and 4 curved leaves flanking it that read as fish circling a pool. That repeat runs over the whole black ground and continues uninterrupted into the open spandrels, where the same motif appears in reverse against a light camel background. At the center sits a lobed ivory diamond medallion with a dark rosette cluster in its core, finished top and bottom with small anchor-shaped pendants. The main border is a black ground with alternating palmettes, rosettes and serrated leaves linked by a thin vine, framed by narrow guard stripes carrying a repeating floret and a reciprocal sawtooth line at the very edge. The flatwoven ends finish in hand-tied ivory fringe, visible in the detail photographs along with the tight, even knotting on the reverse.

A Black Ground Read in Brown, Green and Ivory

Black does the heavy work here. The field and the main border are both a deep carbon black, and against that the fish lattice is picked out in soft rose and dusty salmon, warm brown and camel, with pinpoints of ivory and pale blue that make the pattern sparkle rather than blur at a distance. The corner spandrels shift to a light camel brown ground, which keeps the 4 corners from reading heavy and lets the black lozenge of the field float. The medallion is ivory, almost chalk white at the outer lobes, and the silk in the pile gives it a slight sheen that changes as the light moves. Running around the border system are narrow guard stripes in sage and pistachio green, the cool note that stops the brown and rose from turning the whole rug warm, and small burgundy accents inside the palmettes add depth. It is a formal palette that sits comfortably with dark wood, brass, cream walls and most leather.

Made in India in the Tabriz Mahi Tradition

The Mahi fish layout belongs to the Tabriz weaving tradition, and this piece is an honest, confident interpretation of it made in India, where most of the world's best contemporary hand-knotted work is now produced. Indian workshops weave this design on vertical looms with a cotton warp and weft and a wool pile carrying silk accents, and the fineness of the weave is what makes the pattern possible: the fish repeat only resolves when the knot count is high enough to draw a rosette a quarter inch across. The reverse of the rug shows that density clearly, with small, regular knots and crisp pattern definition from the back. If you want to understand where a piece like this sits next to Persian weaving, our guide to the difference between Persian and Oriental rug production is worth a few minutes, and you can see how this one compares with other 6x9 Oriental rugs in the collection.