8'2" x 11'7" Persian Tabriz Rug | Black Mahi Fish Design | Wool & Silk, Approx. 400 KPSI

This 8'2" x 11'7" Persian Tabriz is the Mahi drawing done at the knot count it deserves. The field carries roughly 400 knots per square inch, about 60 Raj in the Tabriz system, which is why the tiny fish leaves stay crisp rather than blurring into texture. The pile is wool with silk worked through the highlights, clipped low at 1/4", so the medallion outlines catch light like fine embroidery. A rug of this fineness in a full 8 by 12 room size is uncommon, and it arrives with a certificate of authenticity documenting origin, materials and knot count.

Design and Motifs

The whole surface is drawn in the Mahi, or fish, pattern: an all over Herati lattice of diamond frames, each one holding a small rosette with four curved lancet leaves turning around it like fish circling a pond. That lattice runs unbroken from the outer field straight through the dark center, so the medallion is defined by color and outline rather than by a change of pattern. At the heart sits a lobed ivory medallion with an 8 petal rosette in its core, ringed by scalloped edging, with a slender palmette pendant at each end. The dark ground around it is drawn as a large scalloped oval, and matching quarter arcs fill the 4 corners, leaving broad open shoulders of light field. The main border carries alternating rosettes and cupped palmettes on a curling vine, and it is fenced by several narrow guard stripes, including a pearl and dot band that reads like a row of beads along the whole perimeter.

A Black Field Lit by Ivory, Green and Rust

Color here works in two registers. The inner oval is black, dense and matte where the wool sits and slightly lustrous where the silk catches, and against it the Herati tracery is picked out in ivory, pale straw and small flecks of rust and green so the dark ground never looks flat. Surrounding it, the open field lightens to a soft taupe and pale sage, a quiet ground that makes the black shape read as a floating pool. The central medallion is ivory graded into cream and a muted olive core, and the pendants repeat that ivory so the eye travels the long axis of the rug. The main border sits on a light sage ground where the flowerheads bloom in dusty rose, mauve, terracotta rust, moss green, gold and white, the brightest color in the piece and the reason the palette never turns cold. The guard stripes add thin lines of burgundy, sky blue and ivory, the selvage is finished in black, and the fringe is clean ivory at both ends.

Woven in Tabriz, Northwest Persia

Tabriz has been the commercial and technical capital of Persian weaving for centuries, and its workshops measure fineness in Raj, the number of knots across a gereh of about 2.75 inches. At 60 Raj, roughly 400 knots per square inch, this piece sits in the collector grade band: 40 Raj is ordinary commercial work, 50 is fine, and only the better ateliers commit to 60 and above because the finer the grid, the slower the loom and the more exact the cartoon must be. The cotton foundation is drawn tight and flat, the wool is spun thin enough to follow the Mahi grid without thickening the leaves, and the silk is reserved for outlines and highlights rather than scattered at random. Judged from the back, the knot lines are even and the pattern is as legible as it is on the face, which is the honest test of a well made Tabriz. Browse more Persian Tabriz rugs to see how this weave compares across sizes.