8'1" x 11'4" Persian Tabriz Rug | Mahi Fish Medallion | 60 Raj Approx. 400 KPSI

Pick this one up by the corner and you can feel where the money went. The 3/8" wool pile sits tight and low over a cotton foundation, and the back reads clean and even at 60 Raj, roughly 400 knots per square inch, which is collector-grade territory for a Tabriz workshop piece. The drawing is the classic Mahi fish layout: a small ivory diamond medallion floating in an ocean of miniature rosettes and curled leaves, with dark spandrels and ivory corner panels closing the field. At 8'1" x 11'4" it is a true room-size piece, and it sits in the sweet spot buyers look for when they shop 8 x 11 Persian rugs. Condition is excellent and never used, with full pile, straight sides and original ivory fringe. Every rug we ship leaves Freeport with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The field carries a full Herati repeat, the pattern weavers call Mahi, or fish: a diamond lattice built from paired curled leaves that flank each small rosette like fish circling a pond, repeated at a scale so fine that the whole field shimmers rather than reads as separate units. At the center sits a scalloped diamond medallion with a lattice-filled ivory core of 8 petal rosettes, ringed by a dark navy-brown band of dense florals and outlined in olive gold. Pendant palmettes drop from the medallion at top and bottom, each one a small mirrored version of the center. The 4 corners are anchored by large stepped spandrels in the same dark ground, and inside each spandrel sits an ivory panel holding its own tidy Herati lattice. The border system runs to 7 bands: a wide main border of alternating shield rosettes and serrated leaves on near-black ground, framed by narrow reciprocal guard stripes of tiny 4 point florets and a running vine. Corner resolution is precise on all 4 sides, the mark of a workshop cartoon rather than village improvisation.

Red, Ivory and Brown: The Color Reading

The field is a warm brick red that leans toward salmon in daylight and deepens to terracotta under lamps, and because the Mahi repeat is drawn in ivory, straw gold, olive and pale blue, the red never sits flat. Look closely at the field detail and you see cream rosette heads with navy centers, brown-black leaf pairs, and scattered flecks of sky blue and soft pink that lift the whole surface. The medallion core is a clean ivory, the ring around it a near-black navy brown, and the outline a mustard olive that separates the two without a hard edge. Spandrels and the main border share that same aubergine-to-black ground, and against it the shield rosettes come forward in dusty rose, pale celadon, powder blue and cream, with true green leaves running between them. Guard stripes pick up gold and ivory to keep the frame from closing in. The selvedge is bound in red, the fringe is natural ivory, and the overall palette is warm and traditional: red and cream with brown depth rather than anything bright or modern.

Tabriz Weaving and the 60 Raj Standard

Tabriz sits in the northwest corner of Persia and has been the commercial heart of Persian weaving for centuries, the city that supplied the cartoons, the master weavers and the grading language the rest of the trade borrowed. Tabriz counts fineness in Raj, the number of knots across a gereh of about 2.75 inches: 40 Raj is ordinary commercial work, 50 is fine, and 60 Raj, roughly 400 knots per square inch, is where a workshop is weaving for reputation rather than volume. That count is what allows the Mahi repeat here to stay legible at miniature scale instead of blurring. Tabriz also gave the Mahi design its definitive form, and a fine Mahi is the piece by which Tabriz weavers are judged. The wool is tough highland fleece, spun firm and clipped short so the pattern stays crisp and the pile wears slowly, which is exactly why these rugs end up under dining tables and in busy family rooms and still look right 30 years later.