8'2" x 11'2" Persian Tabriz Rug | Ivory All Over Floral | 60 Raj Wool and Silk, Never Used

This is a workshop-grade Tabriz woven in the 2000s and never put on a floor, still carrying the full clipped pile and the crisp, unrounded edges of a rug that went straight from the loom into storage. It measures 8'2" x 11'2", one of the most useful proportions in the house, and it sits comfortably among our 8 x 11 Persian rugs for a seating group or a long dining table. The pile is wool with silk worked through the flowers and outlines, knotted at roughly 400 knots per square inch on a cotton foundation, which is why the drawing stays smooth rather than stepped. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity stating origin, materials and knot count.

Design and Motifs

There is no central medallion here. The field carries a true all over floral design, a repeating lattice of large Shah Abbasi palmettes and shaded rosettes joined by thin vine scrolls that never quite close, so the eye keeps traveling across the whole surface. Between the palmettes sit serrated saz leaves, small tulip and carnation sprays, curling cloud bands and feathery lanceolate leaves, each one drawn with an outline only 1 or 2 knots thick. The main border repeats a fan-shaped palmette flanked by curved leaves, set on a lighter ground, and it is framed on both sides by narrow pink guard stripes filled with a running bud and leaf meander. Because the pattern repeats rather than radiating from a center, the rug can be turned, placed off-center under furniture, or partly covered by a sofa without losing its composition.

A Pale Ivory Field with Green, Blue and Coral

The ground is a warm ivory, closer to unbleached cream than to stark white, and it reads slightly champagne where the silk catches light. Against it the palmettes are built in layered tones rather than flat blocks: sage and olive green in the leaves, deep bottle green in the border flowers, teal and soft powder blue in the petal centers, and coral running from a light salmon through to a dusty rose in the larger blossoms. Small hits of deep burgundy and near-black outline the flower hearts and keep the pastels from going soft, while pale taupe and grey are used for shading inside the big rosettes. The guard stripes bring a clear rose pink that ties the border to the coral in the field. Overall it is a light, pale rug that brightens a dim room, and the color temperature is warm enough to work with wood floors, brass and cream upholstery.

Tabriz Weaving and the 60 Raj Standard

Tabriz sits in northwest Persia and has been the country's most organized weaving city for centuries, working from paper cartoons with a designer, a master weaver and a finisher on each piece. Tabriz measures fineness in Raj, the number of knots counted across one gereh, about 2.75 in of width: 40 Raj is commercial goods, 50 Raj is fine, and 60 Raj, roughly 400 knots per square inch, is where a rug becomes collector grade. This piece is a 60 Raj weave, and you can see what that buys in the close-up photographs, where a single petal carries 4 or 5 separate colors and the vine outlines curve cleanly instead of stair-stepping. The silk is used selectively for highlights, so it lifts the flowers without making the rug slippery, and the wool pile underneath is dense, low and evenly clipped. Unused, unwashed by traffic and still square on the loom lines, it is exactly the condition a Tabriz of this quality should be found in.