8'2" x 11'4" Persian Tabriz Rug | Ivory Millefleur Field | Red Lobed Medallion | Excellent Condition

Hold this one at arm's length and it reads as a calm ivory rug with a red heart. Step closer and the field breaks into hundreds of separate blossoms, each one drawn and knotted on its own. That contrast between quiet from across the room and busy from two feet away is the whole argument for a good Tabriz. The 8'2" x 11'4" footprint sits right in the sweet spot of 8 x 11 Persian rugs, large enough to carry a seating group or a full dining table and still leave a clean margin of floor. The pile is a crisp 3/8" of wool on a cotton foundation, the ends and sides are sound, and the rug is in excellent condition with no repairs to disclose. It ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming it as a hand-knotted piece woven in Persia.

Design and Motifs

The layout is the classic Tabriz medallion and corner scheme, handled with an unusually light touch. A red lobed medallion sits dead center, stacked with a violet and rose inner cartouche and a small rosette at its core, and it sends a pointed pendant north and south toward the ends of the field. Four deep wine spandrels anchor the corners, each filled with curling palmettes and vase-like flower clusters. Between them the ivory ground is worked as a millefleur field, a dense scatter of tiny blossoms, buds, serrated leaves and thin vines that arc outward from the medallion in sweeping crescent lines rather than a rigid repeat. The main border carries alternating cartouches and floral bosses on a red ground, framed by several narrow guard stripes of reciprocal vine and micro-rosettes, one of which reads almost blue-grey against the crimson. Nothing here is stamped or mechanical; the corner detail photograph shows how the weaver resolved the vine at the turn rather than simply cutting it off.

A Study in Ivory and Red

The ground is a warm ivory, closer to unbleached cream than to a cold white, and it changes weight as you walk around it because the pile lies in one direction. Against that, the reds do most of the work: a bright coral red in the medallion and the main border, deepening to wine and near-burgundy in the spandrels and in the shaded outlines. The small flowers are where the palette really opens up, with violet and grape purple clustered in the medallion core, dusty rose, soft sage and olive green in the leafwork, touches of gold and pale blue in the guard stripes, and dark charcoal outlining that keeps every blossom legible against the cream. Because the field is so light and the red so concentrated, the rug brightens a dark floor instead of absorbing it, and it will sit comfortably with both warm woods and cooler grey and navy upholstery.

Woven in Tabriz, Northwest Persia

Tabriz sits in the northwest of Persia and has been a commercial and court weaving center for centuries, long enough that its workshops set the standard other towns measure themselves against. Weavers there count fineness in Raj, the number of knots across a gereh of about 2.75 inches, and the discipline of that system shows in a rug like this one: the curved line of the vine holds its shape, the medallion outline is smooth rather than stepped, and the individual flowers stay round at a scale of a few knots each. That is a drawing achievement before it is a knotting achievement, and it is exactly what separates city work from village work. Among Persian Tabriz rugs, the ivory millefleur field is one of the harder grounds to weave well, since every mistake shows against a light background. This one came through clean.