7'10" x 10' Wool and Silk Oriental Rug | Tabriz Medallion Design | Dense Fine Weave

Turn this one over and the argument is settled in a second. The back is tight, even and gridded, the knot rows count out small and regular against the ruler in the last photograph, and the fringe is the cotton warp of the rug itself rather than anything sewn on. It is a hand-knotted Oriental rug in wool with silk drawn through the highlights, woven on a cotton foundation in a classic Tabriz medallion layout, and it sits in the most useful room size there is. At 7'10" x 10' it covers a seating group or a six seat dining table the way the best 8x10 area rugs should, with pile deep enough to feel substantial underfoot and a surface fine enough to hold hairline detail. Every rug we ship leaves with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a lobed ivory medallion with a burgundy rosette core, ringed by 8 curling cloud band scrolls and finished top and bottom with slender pendants that reach out into the field. Around it the black ground is filled edge to edge with a continuous scrolling vine system: split palmettes, 5 petal blossoms, tiny buds and lanceolate leaves, all drawn on a curved line rather than a stepped one, which is the mark of a workshop cartoon rather than village improvisation. The 4 corners carry burgundy spandrels that mirror the medallion's arabesque in reverse, so the eye reads the composition as one closed design. There are 5 border bands in total: a wide burgundy main border stocked with palmettes, rosettes and, in the corner close-up, small facing bird figures, flanked by ivory guard stripes of meandering vine and narrow dark blue minor stripes that frame the whole thing cleanly against the black outer selvage.

A Black Field with Burgundy and Ivory

The field is a true black, deep and matte where the wool lies flat and lifting to a soft charcoal sheen where the silk catches light, which is why the rug photographs one way straight on and another from an angle. Against that ground the vinework runs in warm gold and antique brass, with olive and sage green leaves, dusty rose blossoms and small points of pure ivory that read as scattered light across the surface. The medallion breaks the field with cream and champagne ivory, its center a deep burgundy that repeats exactly in the main border, so the strongest color in the rug appears in only 2 places and ties the composition together. Burgundy here is a wine red with a brown undertone rather than a bright red, which keeps the palette formal. Practically, a dark ground of this kind hides traffic better than an ivory field and sits well on warm oak floors, as the showroom photographs show.

Made in India: Weaving Town and Quality

India is where most of the world's good contemporary hand-knotted work is now made, and the best north Indian workshops weave classical medallion cartoons to standards that were once the preserve of a handful of city ateliers. This piece comes out of that tradition: a fine double knot on a cotton warp, clipped low so the drawing stays crisp, with silk carried through the medallion, the spandrel scrolls and the brightest vine highlights to give them lift against the wool. The weave is dense and regular across the full 94" width, the selvages are hand overcast in black, and the ends are secured and finished with the warp fringe you see in the detail shot. Buy it for what it is, an honestly made Indian workshop rug with a serious knot count and a design pedigree, rather than a village piece dressed up, and the value is obvious in the hand.