8'2" x 11'6" Persian Tabriz Rug | Wool & Silk Mahi Fish Design | 400+ KPSI, Never Used

Look at the field of this 8'2" x 11'6" Persian Tabriz from a few feet away and it reads as a single soft rose plane. Kneel down and it dissolves into thousands of tiny paired fish leaves, each one drawn with a clean outline that only a weave of this density can hold. The pile is wool with silk worked through the highlights, which is why the ivory medallion and the pale green spandrels shift in brightness as you walk around the rug. It has never been on a floor: the pile stands full height, the ends are secure, and the cotton fringe is still bright. Among large Persian rugs this is a genuinely usable format, wide enough to sit under a full seating group without crowding the walls. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity recording origin, materials and knot count.

Design and Motifs

This is the Mahi, or fish, layout that Tabriz built its modern reputation on. The entire field carries an uninterrupted herati lattice: a small rosette inside each diamond compartment, flanked by 4 curved lanceolate leaves that the weavers call fish. The repeat is tight and perfectly registered from one end of the 11'6" length to the other, which is the real test of a drawing this small. Sitting on top of it is a lobed diamond medallion outlined in ivory, with a deep green inner cartouche and a small rose and ivory rosette at the exact center, finished top and bottom with stepped pendants. The 4 corner spandrels answer the medallion in the same green and ivory, so the composition closes cleanly. The main border is a burgundy ground carrying alternating ivory cartouches and large rosettes linked by a scrolling vine, framed by 3 guard stripes on each side, the outermost one running a delicate meander that keeps the edges crisp.

A Rose Field With Ivory, Green and Blue

The ground is an unusual dusty rose, closer to old brick and terracotta than to the hot madder red most people expect from a Persian rug, and it is the reason this piece works in rooms where a true red would shout. Inside the lattice the tiny fish leaves are picked out in dark navy blue, olive green and cream, so the field actually mixes 4 colors at close range while reading as one warm tone at a distance. The medallion frame and spandrels are a clean ivory that the silk keeps luminous, and the green used inside the medallion and across the corners is a muted sage that drifts toward olive under lamplight. The border sets all of it against a deep burgundy, with rosettes in cream, celadon and soft gold. Blacks and midnight blues in the outlines do the structural work, drawing every motif and keeping the pale ivory from spreading. The cotton fringe and the selvedge finish in natural cream.

Tabriz Weaving and Knot Quality

Tabriz sits in the northwest of Persia and has been the country's most organized weaving city for centuries, with workshops that grade their own output by Raj, the number of knots counted across a gereh of about 2.75 inches of width. At roughly 400 knots per square inch this rug sits around the 60 Raj mark, the level at which a Tabriz workshop stops producing commercial goods and starts producing collector pieces. You can see the consequence in the photographs: the fish leaves keep their curve instead of turning into steps, the medallion outline is a smooth lobed line, and the border cartouches are all identical. The foundation is cotton, tightly warped and beaten down hard, which gives the rug a firm flat handle and the dimensional stability to lie true without buckling. The pile is clipped short at about 1/4 inch, the standard finish for fine Tabriz work, because a low pile is what lets a drawing this detailed stay legible for decades of use.