8'2" x 9'9" Wool & Silk Oriental Rug | Mahi Tabriz Herati Design | Brand New, Made in India

This is a brand new, never used hand-knotted rug in the Mahi Tabriz Herati design, woven in India with a wool and silk pile on a cotton foundation. It measures 8'2" x 9'9", which puts it in the most useful room size there is: large enough to hold a sofa group or a 6 seat dining table with the chairs still on the rug, small enough to sit inside a standard room without crowding the baseboards. The drawing here is what carries the piece. Thousands of tiny diamonds fill the black field in perfect register, the silk catches light along the vine work, and the pile is clipped low so nothing blurs. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming the size, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

Mahi means fish, and the name comes from the Herati unit that repeats across the field: a small diamond enclosing a rosette, with 4 curved lanceolate leaves swimming around it like fish circling a pond. That unit repeats in an unbroken lattice from border to border, interrupted only by a scalloped central medallion and its 2 slender pendants, which step out top and bottom into the field. The medallion is built in layers, an 8 petal rosette at the very center, then a ring of dark cartouches, then a broad camel ground carrying the same diamond lattice at reduced scale so the pattern never stops. Wide corner spandrels repeat the design on an ivory ground and give the field its lobed, scalloped silhouette. The border system runs 7 bands deep: a broad main border of palmettes and curling leaves on black, flanked by narrow reciprocal saw-tooth guards and by outer bands of blossom and vine on gold. Corners are resolved cleanly, with the vine turning the angle instead of being cut off, which is the detail to check on any rug in this pattern.

A Black Field Lit by Ivory, Olive Green and Rust

The field is a true ink black, deep and even, and it is the reason the rug reads as formal rather than country. Against that black, the lattice is drawn in rust and terracotta rosettes with small ivory and pale slate blue flowers scattered through it, so the surface sparkles like a night sky rather than sitting flat. The medallion and spandrels shift to a warm camel and gold, softened with rose and outlined in ivory, with olive and deep bottle green filling the cartouches around the center rosette. Accents of deep garnet red, aubergine and light blue appear in the guard borders, and the silk in the pile makes those lighter tones flare and recede as you walk past. Practically, a black ground of this kind hides traffic better than an ivory field and anchors a room with pale walls, oak floors, walnut furniture or a dark stone fireplace. The ivory cotton fringe and black selvage frame it all crisply.

Made in India: Weaving Quality in the Mahi Tradition

India is where most of the world's best contemporary hand-knotted work is now made, and we say that with confidence: the looms there produce fine, honest, densely knotted rugs at a fraction of what comparable weaving costs elsewhere. The Mahi Herati is the pattern that exposes a weaver, because the lattice must stay in register across more than 9 feet of length. On this piece it does, as the close-up photographs of the field show, with straight lattice lines and consistent rosette spacing. The pile is clipped short so the fine drawing stays legible, the wool is dense underfoot, and the silk is used as highlight rather than filler. As an Oriental rug in the most requested room proportion, it also sits squarely in our range of 8x10 hand-knotted rugs, and it arrives in perfect, unused condition straight off the loom.