8'3" x 8'4" Persian Tabriz Round Rug | Black Field Floral Medallion | Wool and Silk, Never Used

A true circle is the hardest shape a weaver can attempt, because the pattern has to close on itself with no straight edge to hide a mistake, and this 8'3" x 8'4" piece closes cleanly all the way around. It is a wool and silk Tabriz with a jet black field, a burgundy border and a rose and ivory star medallion at dead center, woven at roughly 400 knots per square inch so the vine work stays fine-lined even at the tightest curves. The silk sits in the highlights, catching light on the petals and leaf tips while the wool ground stays matte, which is what gives the surface its depth in the close-up photographs. It is recent and has never been walked on: the fringe is full, the pile is standing upright, and the back tag and tape measure shot confirm the dimensions. Buyers looking at round Persian rugs in this diameter rarely see one this fine. Every rug ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The drawing is built in concentric rings. At the core sits a small burgundy 8 pointed star holding a single rosette, set inside a cream cartouche ringed by pale blue micro blossoms and brown serrated leaves. Around that, a rose colored medallion throws out 8 cream palmette lobes, each one filled with a curled acanthus and a red carnation. The black field beyond is not empty for a second: it carries mirrored vases of blossoms, split arabesque vines, peonies, carnations and pairs of long tailed birds facing each other across the axis, which you can see clearly in the field close-up. An ivory scalloped ring separates field from border, and the burgundy main border repeats scrolling vine, cloud bands, pine cone leaves and more perched birds, closing with a black outer guard and a soft ivory fringe. Nothing in the layout is approximate; the repeats line up as the circle comes back around.

Black, Burgundy and Ivory: Reading the Palette

The field is a deep, saturated black, closer to ink than charcoal, and it does the heavy lifting: every color placed on it reads brighter than it actually is. The border is a warm burgundy red with a brick undertone, and between the two sits a narrow band of clean ivory that keeps them from bleeding into each other visually. The medallion works in rose pink, old ivory and a dark oxblood at the very center. Scattered through the vine work are olive and moss greens in the leaves, apricot and amber in the palmettes, powder blue in the small four petal blossoms, plum, soft lilac and chalk white in the flower heads, and caramel brown in the bird plumage. It is a multi colored rug held together by three anchors, black, burgundy and ivory, which is why it reads as formal rather than busy. On dark hardwood the black field grounds the room; against a pale floor the burgundy border draws the circle.

Tabriz Weaving and the Quality of This Round

Tabriz sits in northwest Persia and has been the country's design capital for centuries, the place where the curved line, the flowing vine and the layered medallion were worked out and then copied everywhere else. Tabriz measures fineness in Raj, the number of knots across a gereh of about 2.75 inches: 40 Raj is commercial work, 50 is fine, and 60 Raj lands near 400 knots per square inch, which is collector territory and the grade this rug sits in. That count is what allows the 8 petal rosette at the center to be drawn in full detail inside a few inches, and what lets the birds in the field have separate wing feathers. The pile is wool with silk worked into the highlights on a cotton foundation, cropped low so the pattern stays crisp, and the side finish and fringe are tidy right around the circumference. This is workshop weaving, not village weaving, and the round format means the loom work had to be planned motif by motif rather than simply repeated.