7'1" x 11' Persian Tabriz Rug | Shekargah Hunting Scene | Wool and Silk Pile

This is a hunting carpet in the old Tabriz manner, worked at 7'1" x 11' in wool with silk accents on a cotton foundation. The field is a living landscape: riders on horseback with drawn bows, deer breaking through flowering branches, leopards, cranes and songbirds, all drawn small enough that you keep finding new figures the longer you look. A lobed medallion sits at the center with a single mounted hunter inside it, and pale blue spandrels anchor the four corners against a deep indigo main border. The pile is silky underfoot, the drawing is curved and confident rather than village-angular, and the piece is in perfect condition with a recent weave. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity stating origin, materials and construction.

Design and Motifs

The layout is a classic Shekargah, the Persian hunting ground, built on a central medallion with matching corner spandrels and a densely populated field between them. Inside the medallion a rider in pale robes turns in the saddle toward a spotted leopard, surrounded by slender flowering stems. Out in the field, archers gallop after gazelle and deer, hounds and big cats give chase, and birds perch in the vine scroll between palmettes and 8 petal rosettes. Curling cloudband cartouches frame the 4 corners, each filled with cranes, blossoms and small animals. The main border runs deep indigo with alternating palmette cartouches, and a close look shows pairs of birds woven right into the border ground, flanked by narrow guard stripes of ivory and rose. Nothing is repeated mechanically; the animals change pose from one quarter of the rug to the next, which is the mark of a cartoon drawn for a single commission.

A Palette of Ivory, Sage Green and Indigo

The ground is a warm ivory that shifts toward cream and soft butter gold depending on where the light hits the pile, with the silk passages throwing a distinctly brighter sheen than the wool around them. Pale sage green washes through the corner spandrels and the inner medallion, cool enough to read as light blue from across the room and green up close. The main border is a deep navy indigo that gives the whole composition its frame and weight. Animals are picked out in camel, honey gold and pale fawn, with outlines and small blossoms in chocolate brown, oxblood and rust. Touches of dusty rose, powder blue and clean white appear in the flower heads and the guard stripes, keeping the field from ever looking flat. It is a light, drawing-room palette rather than a red one, and it sits easily with oak, walnut, cream upholstery and stone floors.

Tabriz Weaving and Quality

Tabriz sits in northwest Persia and has been the country's design capital for centuries, the place where master weavers measure fineness in Raj and where figural hunting carpets have been a house specialty since the Safavid revivals. Everything in this piece reflects that training: a taut cotton foundation, a tightly clipped pile that holds a crisp outline, and curved drawing that only survives at a high knot count, since a rider's face, a bow string and a leopard's spots collapse into blocks on a coarser weave. The silk is used the way Tabriz workshops use it, as highlight rather than bulk, lifting the flower heads, the animals and the medallion out of the wool ground so the design changes as you walk around it; our guide to Persian silk rugs explains how that contrast is built. At 7'1" x 11' it covers a full seating group or a 6 to 8 seat dining table while still reading as a picture rather than a background.