8'10" x 11'10" Indo-Tabriz Mahi Rug | Wool and Silk Herati Fish Pattern | Brand New

Very few new rugs are drawn this tightly. This 8'10" x 11'10" piece is a full Tabriz Mahi layout, hand-knotted in India with a wool and silk pile on a cotton foundation, and the silk is used where it does the most work: outlining the medallion, the pendants and the fine vine scrolls so those lines catch light while the wool ground stays matte. It sits comfortably in the 9 x 12 rugs range, which means it will float under a full seating group or run under a long dining table with chairs pulled back. The rug is brand new, never walked on, and ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming that it is genuinely hand-knotted.

Design and Motifs

Mahi means fish, and the whole field is built from the Herati unit: a small diamond framed by 4 curved leaves that read as fish circling a rosette, repeated thousands of times across the ground without a single break in the rhythm. Over that lattice sits a scalloped lobed medallion with a second inner cartouche and a tiny third centre, each ring outlined in wine red and rose, with slender pendants reaching toward both ends. The 4 corner spandrels carry the same Herati drawing in a lighter tone, so the field appears to sit inside a softly glowing frame. The main border runs palmettes, rosettes and curling leaf vines on a black ground, flanked by minor guard stripes of boteh teardrops and linked rosettes. Eight narrow stripes in total separate field from selvedge, which is a lot of drawing to hold straight over nearly 12 feet.

A Deep Brown-Black Field With Rose and Olive Light

The ground is a dark chocolate brown that reads close to black from standing height and only opens up into warm brown when you kneel to it. Against that depth the Herati motifs are picked out in ivory, soft turquoise, sage, dusty pink and small flecks of red, so the field looks softly beaded rather than flat. The medallion shifts through salmon, rose and antique beige, with a plum red outline that keeps it crisp. The spandrels and the wide inner surround are a pale taupe beige, and the border returns to black with olive green guard stripes running on either side. Gray, wine red and a little turquoise appear in the smaller flowers, and the cotton fringe at both ends is a clean ivory. It is a dark rug that behaves like a warm one, which is why this palette works over both pale oak and deep walnut floors.

Made in India, Woven to the Tabriz Standard

India is where most of the world's best contemporary hand-knotted work is now made, and this rug is a clear example of why. The weaving workshops of northern India took on the classic Mahi cartoon decades ago and now execute it with a knot count fine enough to hold the curve of a vine and the scallop of a medallion edge without the stair-stepping you see in coarser goods. The back shows an even, tightly packed knot, the selvedges are firm, and the pile is clipped low so the drawing stays legible. If you are weighing terminology before you buy, our guide on what separates a Persian from an Oriental rug explains exactly where a piece like this belongs, and why a well-woven Indian Mahi delivers this level of detail at a fraction of the price of its namesake.