7' x 11' Persian Tabriz Rug | Ivory Floral Medallion Field | Excellent Condition

This 7' x 11' Persian Tabriz was hand-knotted in northwest Persia on a cotton foundation with a 3/8" wool pile, and it is the kind of room-size piece that reads lighter than most traditional work because the field is ivory rather than red. The drawing is a full workshop layout: one lobed medallion on center, scrolled spandrels at the 4 corners, and a continuous floral field running out to a wide brick red main border. A little longer than the standard 7x10 Persian rugs most people shop for, it covers a seating group or a dining table comfortably without crowding the walls. Condition is excellent, the pile is even across the whole surface, and the ivory cotton fringe at both ends is intact. Every rug we ship carries a certificate of authenticity confirming origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The center medallion is a pointed, scallop-edged cartouche in brick red, outlined in navy and filled with an ivory rosette cluster that repeats the palette of the field in miniature. Above and below it sit smaller red pendant finials, each hanging from a thin vine that ties the medallion into the surrounding floral scheme. The field itself is not a plain ground with a medallion dropped on it: palmettes, 8 petal rosettes, serrated acanthus leaves and curling vine tendrils cover the ivory from border to border, with paired teal palmettes flanking the medallion on all 4 sides. The corner spandrels are drawn in salmon and carry acanthus scrollwork and small urn-like cartouches rather than a flat block of color. Border work runs in 5 bands: a narrow reciprocal edge, a green vine guard stripe, a thin ivory minor border, the wide brick red main border with alternating palmettes and leaf rosettes, and a final green guard on the outside. It is a disciplined, curvilinear drawing with the kind of accurate corner resolution you only get from a town workshop working off a full cartoon.

A Close Read of the Color Palette

The ground is a warm ivory that leans toward soft butter and pale cream depending on how light falls across the pile, which puts this piece squarely among ivory Persian rugs that work over wood and light stone floors. Against that ground the main border is a brick red with a clear rust orange cast, deeper in the shadows and brighter where the wool catches the light. Between the two sits a band of salmon and peach in the spandrels and the inner field edge, which softens the transition from pale center to strong border. The accent colors are where the rug gets its life: sage and teal green in the paired palmettes and the vine guard stripes, inky navy in the rosettes and leaf outlines, gold and ochre in the smaller blossoms, powder blue in the serrated leaves, and small touches of pink and rose in the border flowers. Dark brown and near-black outlining holds every motif crisp. The overall impression is warm and multi-colored but never loud, because the ivory field carries most of the surface area.

Tabriz: The Town and the Weave

Tabriz sits in the northwest corner of Persia and has been the commercial and design capital of Persian weaving for centuries. It is the town that institutionalized the workshop system: a designer draws the cartoon, a master supervises the loom, and weavers follow the drawing knot by knot, which is why Tabriz pieces hold curved lines and resolve their corners so accurately. Fineness in Tabriz is measured in Raj, the number of knots counted across a gereh of roughly 2.75 inches, with 40 Raj the commercial grade and 50 and above considered fine weaving. This rug shows the construction that goes with that tradition: a tight cotton foundation, a firm handle, a closely clipped wool pile and a clean back where the knot rows sit straight and uniform, as the ruler photograph shows. The wool is the hard-wearing local fleece that gives Tabriz work its reputation for holding up in traffic for generations, and the pile here still stands full with no thinning or repair.