7'9" x 10'3" Persian Tabriz Rug | Signed Ivory Floral Medallion | Wool & Silk, Approx. 400 KPSI

A workshop piece from the 1980s that the weaver was willing to put his name on: a small apricot cartouche sits at one end of the field, woven in with the design rather than added afterwards. The pile is wool with silk worked into the brightest lights, laid on a cotton foundation at roughly 400 knots per square inch, which is the only reason a field this busy stays legible instead of turning into mush. At 7'9" x 10'3" it sits in the familiar 8x10 Persian rug footprint, the size most American dining and sitting rooms are actually built around, and the pile is full and even end to end with no repairs. Every rug we ship carries a certificate of authenticity recording origin, materials, knot count and measurements.

Design and Motifs

The drawing is classic Tabriz workshop layout: a lobed central medallion on a rust ground, ringed by pale blue and taupe scallops, with a star rosette at the dead center and small palmettes turning around it. Two crested cartouches finish the medallion top and bottom on the long axis, and 4 corners carry camel-brown spandrels filled with curled leaves and split palmettes, which pulls the eye out toward the border. Between them the ivory field is covered edge to edge with Shah Abbasi palmettes, serrated leaves, buds and a thin vine scroll that links every element without a single dead patch, the sort of continuous curved line that only holds up at this knot count. The main border runs a procession of palmettes and leaf forms, flanked by narrow apricot guard stripes of alternating rosettes, and the signature cartouche interrupts one of those guard stripes so quietly that most buyers miss it until it is pointed out.

Ivory Ground, Sage Border, Salmon Heart

The field is a warm ivory, closer to soft cream than white, and it is the reason this rug reads light in a room that most 400 KPSI floral pieces would darken. Against it the medallion goes brick and salmon, with rust outlines, blushed pink petals and small ivory highlights that catch the silk. The main border is a muted sage green, dusty rather than bright, and it frames the ivory the way a mat frames a print; the guard stripes shift to a peachy apricot, which is where the salmon note repeats and ties the border back to the medallion. Scattered through the vinework are old blues, from a slate cornflower in the small rosettes to a deep navy in the leaf shading, plus olive and forest green foliage and touches of camel and gold. Everything is tertiary and slightly dusted, nothing shouts, which is typical of good 1980s workshop dyeing and why this piece belongs with other ivory and beige Persian rugs in a room with warm woods and cream walls.

Tabriz Weaving and What 60 Raj Means

Tabriz, in the far northwest of Persia, has been the country's most commercially serious weaving city for centuries, and it is the one place where fineness is quoted in Raj, the count of knots per gereh (about 2.75 in) across the width of the rug. A 40 Raj Tabriz is ordinary commercial goods; 50 is fine; 60 Raj, roughly 400 knots per square inch, is where the drawing tightens up enough for curved vines, tiny rosettes and shaded petals to be rendered cleanly, and it is the grade collectors look for in a floor-size piece. That resolution is visible on the reverse, where the knot rows sit small and regular on the cotton warps. Add the silk in the highlights, the flat even handle, and the woven signature, and this reads as an atelier commission rather than a market run, which is exactly what buyers of signed Tabriz rugs from this period are hunting for.