7' x 10' Persian Tabriz Rug | Wool | Red Boteh

A hand-knotted wool carpet measuring 7' x 10', knotted in Persia to a Tabriz drawing. The whole field is given over to one motif, the boteh, repeated in tilted rows across a clear red ground, and the effect from a few feet away is of a dense textile print rather than a medallion carpet. A wide dark border closes it on all four sides. The pile is 3/8" and the condition is given as excellent.

Design

There is no medallion and no corner spandrel. Instead the field carries row after row of boteh, each one leaning to the left, outlined in ivory and filled with a small hooked interior in green, gold or dark brown with a seeded centre. Between the rows sit tiny stepped hooks and squared bracket shapes that lock the repeat together and keep the red from reading as empty space. The main border runs a thin salmon vine over near-black ground, with small reclining boteh laid along it and red rosettes at the turns. Narrow ivory guard bands on either side, patterned with a running chain, separate the border from the field and from the outer edge, and this rectangular format keeps the repeat square to the sides all the way up.

Colour

The field is a cool true red, closer to cherry than to brick, and it holds the same value from end to end with only slight movement where the light crosses the pile in the close photographs. Against it the borders are an indigo so deep the table records it as black, and at arm's length that is how it reads. The boteh themselves are where the rest of the palette lives: ivory outlines, bottle green, mustard gold, a dull aubergine, pale blue and small touches of rose, each in quantities too small to shift the overall red and navy reading but enough to keep the repeat from going flat.

Making

Hand-knotted in wool on a 3/8" pile, a weight that holds the fine outlining of the boteh without the motifs crowding each other. At 7' x 10' it falls into the medium sizes between 6x9 and 8x10, and the back shown in the last photograph is even and tightly packed, with the ivory warp fringe finished flat at the end. Tabriz in north-west Persia has long woven this all-over boteh layout alongside its better known medallion work, and this is a straightforward example of it, in good order throughout. More of our stock is in the full collection.