7'4" x 10'8" Persian Bijar Rug | Tabriz Mahi Fish Pattern | 1970s | Excellent Condition

Pick this rug up by one corner and you feel the difference immediately: it is heavy, stiff across the width and completely flat on the floor, which is the first thing any dealer checks on a Bijar. Woven in the 1970s on a cotton foundation with a dense wool pile, this 7'4" x 10'8" piece carries the Mahi, or fish, drawing that Tabriz made famous, executed here with the tight beat-down and the slightly cooler palette of Kurdish northwest Persia. The pile is full and even throughout, the ends and sides are intact, and the navy ground has gained just enough softness with age to look settled rather than new. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity recording origin, materials, age and size.

Design and Motifs

The indigo field is covered edge to edge in the Herati lattice: a fine diamond framework with a rosette at each intersection and two curved lanceolate leaves set on either side, the pair of leaves being the fish that give the pattern its Mahi name. Nothing is left empty, and the repeat runs right under the medallion rather than stopping at it. At the center sits a brick red lobed medallion outlined in ivory, with an inner ivory panel carrying its own small floral cluster and a pendant finial at each end. The 4 corners repeat the same red and ivory spandrel, so the composition reads clearly even when furniture covers part of the field. The main border is a red ground of alternating palmettes and 8 petal rosettes linked by a thin vine, framed inside and out by sky blue guard stripes drawn with angular cypress and leaf forms, plus a narrow gold reciprocal stripe that keeps the whole frame from going heavy.

A Deep Indigo Field Against Brick Red and Sky Blue

The field is a deep navy blue that reads almost black in low light and opens into true indigo where the light rakes across the pile, with a gentle abrash through the length that is the signature of hand-dyed wool. Against it the medallion and spandrels are a warm brick red leaning slightly terracotta, and the ivory outlining acts as the drawing line that separates the two. The guard borders are a soft sky blue, considerably lighter than the field, filled with salmon and coral rosettes, cream leaf forms and small black centers, while a camel gold stripe runs between them. Green appears in measured amounts, a sage tone in the Herati leaves and a darker bottle green in a few border rosettes, and it is this green that keeps the red and blue from reading as a two-color rug. The close-up photographs show the pile at an angle, which is where the ivory, peach and gold accents inside the dark field become easiest to read.

Bijar Weaving and the Mahi Tradition

Bijar is a Kurdish town in northwest Persia, and its weavers earned the name the iron rug of Persia by packing each row of knots down with a heavy metal comb against a thick wet foundation. The result is a rug that is rigid, extremely dense and famously difficult to wear out, which is why so many 19th and 20th century Bijars are still in service. Weavers in the Bijar district also took up the refined Mahi and Herati drawings associated with Tabriz, and that combination of a town-quality curved medallion over a tribal-strength structure is exactly what this piece is. If you want the background on the group, our complete guide to Bijar rugs covers the weave and the wool in detail, and our comparison of Bijar, Zanjan, Tekab and Bukan weaving explains how the sub-districts differ. Fifty years on, this one still lies dead flat and still has its full pile.