8'2" x 11' Persian Tabriz Rug | All Over Hunting Design | Semi-Antique, Excellent Condition

Most all over rugs give up everything in the first two seconds. This one does not. From standing height the 8'2" x 11' field reads as a dense red garden of vines and rosettes, and then you crouch down and find the animals: paired long-tailed birds facing each other over a leaf cluster, small running gazelles threaded between the scrolls, and a deer half hidden behind a palmette. It is a semi-antique Persian rug in excellent condition, hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation with a full even 3/8" pile and clean ivory fringe at both ends, and it lands squarely in the most usable of the 8x11 Persian rugs we carry. A certificate of authenticity ships with the rug.

Design and Motifs

The field carries a mirrored all over design rather than a central medallion, so the pattern repeats along both axes and the rug can be turned end for end without changing how it reads. Curling serrated leaves sweep across the ground in long S shaped runs, anchored by lotus palmettes, 8 petal rosettes and tight buds on hairline vines. Between them the weaver placed the menagerie: two birds with swept tails perched breast to breast above a dark navy cypress-like leaf spray, gazelles mid-stride with heads turned back, and small ivory and tan deer scattered through the lower quarters. The main border runs a soft gold ground with alternating rosette cartouches and split leaves, bracketed by navy guard stripes of meandering vine and a fine ivory minor stripe. A small woven cartouche sits centered in the lower border, too finely drawn to read from the photographs, and it is left unattributed here.

The Red and Gold Palette

The ground is a true madder red, deep and slightly cool rather than orange, and the wool takes light unevenly enough that it moves through the day instead of sitting flat. Against it the main border is the real surprise: a warm beige gold, closer to old straw than to yellow, which lifts the whole rug and keeps 8 feet of red from feeling heavy. Inside the drawing the weaver worked a wide accent range for a village-adjacent piece, with ivory and cream for the birds and outlines, several greens from sage to bottle, indigo and near black navy in the leaf clusters, pale aqua in the flower heads, and small touches of rose, apricot and soft brown in the rosette centers. Navy guard stripes and a thin red outer edge close the composition. Red, beige, ivory, navy and green are the colors that will actually register in a room.

Woven in Tabriz, Northwest Persia

Tabriz sits in the far northwest of Persia and has been the country's most disciplined commercial weaving center for well over a century, with workshops that draw a cartoon first and weave to it, counting fineness in Raj across the width. That workshop discipline is exactly what you see here in the straightness of the borders, the clean corner resolutions where the gold ground turns, and the way the mirrored field repeats without drifting. The back, shown against a ruler, is tight and legible, each knot row clearly readable on a cotton warp and weft, which is why a rug of this age still lies flat and still carries a full pile. Tabriz work of this type was built to be used, and this one has been looked after.