8'2" x 9'9" Mahi Fish Design Oriental Rug | Burgundy Wool & Silk | Brand New

This 8'2" x 9'9" piece is a Mahi, or fish, design worked in wool with silk highlights over a cotton foundation, hand-knotted in India and never used. The back tag photographed in the gallery confirms the hand-knotted construction and the country of manufacture, and the rug ships with a certificate of authenticity. The drawing is the classic Mahi formula that made this pattern one of the most collected layouts in the Oriental rug world: a small, tightly drawn medallion floating over a fine diamond lattice, framed by a wide ivory palmette border. At just over 8 feet by just under 10 feet, it sits squarely in the 8x10 Oriental rugs range, the most usable footprint in the house.

Design and Motifs

The whole field is filled with the herati, the repeating diamond enclosing a rosette with 4 curved outer leaves, the leaves that gave the pattern its fish name. It runs edge to edge in a strict lattice, with tiny 4 dot white flowerheads pricking the rhythm so the surface reads as texture rather than as a flat ground. At the center sits a lobed diamond medallion outlined in near-black, its interior carrying 4 quartered palmettes and a single red rosette at the heart. That medallion rests on a large scalloped ivory sub-field that repeats the same herati lattice in reverse coloring, and a slender sage green outline traces the scallops. Small cusped pendants rise and fall from the top and bottom of the medallion, and the 4 corner spandrels answer the center with the same ivory ground. The main border is a wide ivory band of alternating palmettes and serrated leaf sprays, held between narrow guard stripes of rosettes and meander, and the rug finishes with a red selvedge and plain ivory fringe at both ends.

A Deep Burgundy Field Against Ivory

The field reads as a deep wine burgundy, dense and slightly mottled where the silk highlights catch the light and throw the tone lighter or darker depending on where you stand. Against it, the ivory is genuinely creamy rather than stark white, and it carries the large scalloped center panel, the 4 spandrels and the wide main border, so the layout stays legible from across a room. Inside the small motifs the palette opens up: brick red, soft sage and olive green, gold tan, a clear teal blue in the herati rosettes, and chalk white in the little 4 petal flowerheads. The medallion outline and the cartouche framing it are the darkest note on the rug, close to navy black, which is what makes the center read as a jewel rather than as another patch of pattern. Shoppers looking through burgundy and red area rugs will find this one on the warm, slightly plum side of red rather than the orange side.

Woven in India to a Fine Mahi Standard

India is where most of the world's good contemporary hand-knotted work is now made, and this rug is a clear example of why. The Mahi layout demands a high knot count to hold the tiny herati lattice without the leaves blurring into each other, and here the drawing stays crisp right through the field and into the border palmettes, as the close-up images show. The pile is wool blended with silk, the silk carried in the lighter motifs and the medallion so those areas pick up a sheen, and the foundation is cotton, which keeps a rug of this size flat and square on the floor. The knots are tight enough that the back shows clean, even rows, and the pile has been clipped low in the workshop tradition that suits this pattern. Brand new, never walked on and perfect in every respect, it is the kind of piece that will hold its drawing for decades of daily use.