8'3" x 11'8" Persian Tabriz Rug | Wool & Silk Floral Medallion | 60 Raj, Approx. 400 KPSI, Never Used

This 8'3" x 11'8" Tabriz was woven in the 2000's and has never been laid in a home, which is why the berry red field still carries the full lustre of its wool and the silk outlining still catches light along every vine. The weave runs at 60 Raj, roughly 400 knots per square inch, fine enough for the drawing to stay curved and unbroken across a field of this size, and the back shown in the photographs reads clean and even from selvage to selvage. At 8'3" x 11'8" it belongs with large Persian rugs that anchor a full seating group rather than float in the middle of one. It ships with a certificate of authenticity documenting origin, materials and knot count.

Design and Motifs

A lobed central medallion sits on an ink black ground, its ivory core filled with an 8 petal rosette wreathed in scrolling vine, and the black ring around it is punctuated with small cartouches holding rose and leaf sprays. Above and below, matching pendants close the vertical axis. The rest of the field is a true all-over composition rather than an open ground: thin dark vines climb in every direction carrying serrated saz leaves, palmettes, carnations, tulip sprays and small budding clusters, and if you look along the lower half you will find pairs of long tailed birds worked into the scrollwork, a detail Tabriz designers reserve for their better cartoons. The 4 corners carry gold and ochre spandrels drawn as a mirrored quarter of the medallion, each with its own rosette and curling vine. The wide black main border repeats large palmettes and rosettes on a continuous meander, framed by ivory guard stripes and a slim minor band of green vine and red dots that pulls the whole layout together.

A Soft Berry Red Field Against Ink Black

The field is a soft berry red, cooler and slightly more crimson than a brick or tomato red, and because the wool is unworn it shifts noticeably with the light, reading deeper along the pile direction and brighter against it. The medallion, the border and the small subsidiary motifs are set on a black so dark it edges into inky blue where the silk highlights cross it, which is what gives the layout its contrast at a distance. Between those two poles sits a long list of secondary tones: ivory and cream in the medallion core and guard stripes, gold and antique ochre in the spandrels, salmon and rose pink in the palmettes, olive and grass green in the leaves, and a scattering of pale sky blue and slate blue in the smaller blossoms. The silk passages catch light on the vine stems and leaf edges, so the drawing reads sharply even where colors are close in value.

Tabriz Weaving and Why 60 Raj Matters

Tabriz sits in the northwest of Persia and has been the country's most organized weaving city for centuries, working from drawn cartoons in proper workshops rather than from memory. Tabriz measures fineness in Raj, the number of knots across a gereh of about 2.75 inches of width: 40 Raj is commercial work, 50 Raj is fine, and 60 Raj, the grade of this rug, converts to roughly 400 knots per square inch and is where a Tabriz starts being treated as a collector piece. That density is what lets the weavers hold a curved line through a vine stem, keep a bird's tail from turning into a staircase of steps, and set silk against wool without the silk blurring. On a cotton foundation the rug lies flat and square, and the pile, still full because it has never been walked on, has the weight you expect from a workshop Tabriz of this grade.