8'3" x 9'6" Persian Tabriz Rug | Navy Blue Hunting Pictorial | Wool & Silk Pile

This is a picture rug first and a floor covering second. Across a deep navy field, mounted archers ride down gazelles, foxes slip through blossoming shrubs, and rabbits break for cover, all drawn around a shaped central medallion that opens onto a snow-capped mountain and a river valley. The pile is wool and silk on a cotton foundation, and the silk does exactly what it should here: it lifts the faces, the horses' trappings and the pale sky inside the medallion so those areas catch light while the wool ground stays matte and deep. At 8'3" x 9'6" it reads as a nearly square room rug, which suits a pictorial layout because the scene is seen whole rather than stretched. A small woven cartouche sits in the inner guard band along the top of the field. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming the origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The composition is a classic shekargah, the Persian hunting ground. At the center, a lobed cartouche outlined in rose red frames a landscape: twin mountain peaks under a pale sky, flowering fruit trees, a grazing deer and lamb, a figure in red robes seated at the right, a domed shelter at the left, and a stream with waterfowl running along the lower edge. Four horsemen in plumed helmets ride at the corners of the field, one drawing a bow, another swinging a lasso. Between them the ground fills with leaping stags, hares, a bear, jackals and long-tailed birds, all set among palmettes, carnations and feathered leaves. Pendant rosettes finish the medallion above and below. The wide ivory main border is its own garden: alternating flowering and broad-leaved trees with pairs of standing cranes, peacocks and small songbirds beneath them. Flanking guard bands in teal carry a procession of walking lions alternating with human faces and palmette cartouches, an old Tabriz border conceit that most workshops no longer attempt.

A Navy Field Against Ivory and Teal

The field is a true midnight navy, dark enough to read almost black in shadow and clearly blue where light crosses the pile. That depth is what makes the drawing work, because every animal and flower is picked out in a lighter tone against it: cream and oyster for the gazelles and cranes, camel and honey gold for the lions and foxes, soft rose and coral for the blossoms and the medallion outline, sage and bottle green for the foliage. The main border shifts to a warm ivory that runs toward sand in places, and the guard bands are a cool sea green teal that separates border from field cleanly. Inside the medallion the palette changes again to pale sky blue, apricot and white for the mountain scene, so the center behaves like a framed miniature painting. Rose red appears only as accent, in the blossoms, the rider's coat and the fine outlining, which keeps the whole rug cool and blue rather than warm.

Woven in Tabriz, Northwest Persia

Tabriz sits in the northwest of Persia and has been the country's design capital for centuries, the place where court cartoons were drawn and where the hunting carpet tradition was revived and kept alive by city workshops. Tabriz weavers work on a cotton warp with a hook-ended knife and measure fineness in Raj, knots per gereh across the width, and pictorial work like this cannot be attempted at a coarse count: the faces, the horses' legs and the birds' feet only hold together because the knot is small and the pile is clipped low. The back is even and tight, the sides are firmly overcast and the fringe is original and full. A rug of this kind is usually bought for a formal sitting room or a study where it will be looked at from a chair, and it sits comfortably among other 8 x 10 Persian rugs while offering something none of the plainer medallion designs can.