8'3" x 11'6" Persian Tabriz Rug | Geometric Ivory Medallion | 1980s Wool, Excellent Condition

This 8'3" x 11'6" Tabriz was hand-knotted in northwest Persia in the 1980s, and after roughly 40 years it still reads as a crisp, fully intact rug: even pile from end to end, tight selvages, clean ivory fringe and no repair anywhere in the field. The wool has the slight sheen that Tabriz weavers get from well spun highland fleece, and the drawing is disciplined, with every motif sitting exactly where the cartoon put it. At just over 8 feet by 11 and a half feet it works as a true room size piece, the format most buyers are looking for when they search large 8x12 Persian rugs. It ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a stepped cruciform medallion in ivory, outlined in navy and filled with 4 lobed rosettes, small hooked palmettes and an 8 sided core in rose and green. Above and below it sit two navy pendants shaped like stacked lanterns, each capped with a pale floral spray. The red field around the medallion is not open ground: it is packed with a dense all over lattice of palmettes, serrated leaves, cypress like sprigs and tiny stylized animal forms, the kind of busy but orderly filler that separates a workshop Tabriz from simpler village weaving. Four large ivory spandrels close the corners with salmon inner panels and their own vine work, and the main navy border runs a rhythm of ivory cartouches and hooked brackets between narrow green guard stripes. Buyers who want that firm outline and repeating grid will find it sits squarely in the tradition of geometric Persian rugs, drawn here at a finer scale than most.

Color: Deep Red Ground with Navy, Ivory and Green

The field is a deep rose red that shifts with the light, reading closer to brick in the full room shots and to a brighter cherry tone in the close-up photographs taken under direct light. Against it, the medallion and spandrels are a warm unbleached ivory, almost cream, with soft salmon and peach panels filling the corner brackets. The main border is a very dark indigo navy that anchors the whole composition, and it is edged by two slim moss green guard stripes that repeat around the entire perimeter, a color choice you see often in Tabriz work and rarely elsewhere. Scattered through the field are small accents of sage green, sky blue, gold, aubergine and clear white in the flower heads, which keeps the red from flattening out. This is a classic choice for anyone shopping red and burgundy Persian rugs for a room with wood floors or warm neutral walls.

Tabriz Weaving and Quality

Tabriz sits in the northwest corner of Persia and has been the country's most commercially serious weaving city for centuries, working on vertical looms with the Raj system, where the count is taken across the width in knots per gereh. This piece is a mid-grade to fine city weave on a cotton foundation, and the back photograph shows the point clearly: straight, even knot rows, no lazy lines and enough density for the weaver to draw curved vine work and tiny animal figures at this scale. The wool pile is short and firmly packed, which is why a rug woven in the 1980s still stands up like a much younger piece. If you want to understand how weave structure, dyes and wear together place a rug in a decade, our guide on how to date an Oriental rug covers the same signals a dealer reads by hand.