8'2" x 11'4" Persian Tabriz Rug | Ivory Floral Field with Red Medallion | Fine Wool Pile

This 8'2" x 11'4" hand-knotted Persian Tabriz sits in the classic northwest Persian idiom: an ivory ground worked edge to edge with small flowers, a compact red and navy medallion holding the center, and a wide red border carrying the whole thing. The pile is wool at 3/8", clipped low enough that the drawing stays crisp, and the foundation is cotton, which is what gives a rug this size its flat, stable lie on the floor. It reads formal from across the room and detailed up close, which is the reason this format has stayed in demand for a century. At 8 feet by just over 11 feet it is a true room-size piece, and it belongs with the other 8x11 Persian rugs that anchor a seating group without crowding the walls. Every rug we ship carries a certificate of authenticity documenting origin, materials and construction.

Design and Motifs

The layout is a lobed central medallion with a small pendant at top and bottom, set inside a shaped ivory cartouche that fills most of the field. Inside the medallion the weaver worked a tight rosette on a deep blue ground ringed by red, and around it the ivory field is packed with tiny palmettes, curling vines, leaf sprays and blossoms drawn small and repeated without an obvious break. The 4 corners are filled with heavier floral clusters in plum and red that frame the ivory and give the composition its weight. The main border runs a series of palmettes and turtle-like floral cartouches between narrow guard stripes of running vine, and the whole border system reads as 5 bands, which is more framing than a village rug would attempt. The drawing is curvilinear throughout, with no straight lines in the field, and that flowing line is exactly what a Tabriz workshop is built to produce.

Ivory Ground and the Red Palette

The field is a warm ivory, closer to unbleached cream than white, and because the floral work over it is drawn in such small units the eye reads the ground as softly speckled rather than flat. Against it the palette runs through brick red, a cooler rose red in the medallion, and a deep plum aubergine that shows most clearly in the corner florals and in scattered blossoms across the field. Small touches of indigo and midnight blue mark the medallion center and the outlines of the larger palmettes, and there are quiet notes of soft green and dusty gold in the vine work. The main border is a saturated red that darkens toward brick at the outer guard, which pulls the ivory forward and makes the rug look larger than its footprint. In daylight the cream reads bright and open; under lamps it warms toward parchment and the reds deepen, so the rug behaves differently morning and evening.

Tabriz Origin and Weaving Quality

Tabriz sits in Azerbaijan province in the far northwest of Persia and was the country's capital under the early Safavids, which is why so much of the classical medallion vocabulary traces back to its workshops. Weavers there grade their own fineness by the Raj, the count of knots per gereh of about 2.75 inches measured across the width, and the city's better ateliers work with a hook-ended knife on vertical looms that let them hold a curved line over a long field. That discipline is visible here in how evenly the ivory ground carries its floral repeat from selvedge to selvedge across 8 feet, and in how cleanly the border corners resolve rather than being cut short. The wool is dense and firm under the hand, the pile clipped short in the Tabriz manner so the small motifs stay legible, and the cotton foundation keeps a rug of this length square. It is a workshop piece in every respect, made to be walked on for generations rather than admired from the edge.