8'4" x 11'3" Tabriz Mahi Design Rug | Black Fish Pattern Field | Wool & Silk Pile, Never Used

This is a brand new hand-knotted Oriental rug woven in India in the classic Tabriz Mahi manner, measuring 8'4" x 11'3" with a wool and silk pile on a cotton foundation. The pile is dense and noticeably lustrous, the silk catching light along the scalloped outlines of the medallion while the wool holds the deep black of the field. Nothing about this piece is machine made or printed: the knots are visible on the reverse, the fringe is an extension of the warps, and the selvedges are hand finished. It has never been on a floor, and it ships with a certificate of authenticity documenting size, materials and construction.

Design and Motifs

Mahi means fish, and the field here is filled edge to edge with the Herati fish pattern: small diamond lattices, each enclosing a rosette and flanked by 4 lancet leaves that read as fish circling a pond. That miniature repeat runs unbroken across the black ground, through the elongated medallion and out into the 4 corner spandrels, so the whole 8'4" x 11'3" surface reads as one continuous drawing rather than separate blocks. At the center sits a layered oval medallion with a finely scalloped outline, stepped rings of pattern and a small ivory cartouche at its heart, finished top and bottom with slender pendants. The main border carries alternating palmettes and 8 petal rosettes on an ivory ground, joined by a thin vine and framed by narrow reciprocal guard stripes. At this size it works as an anchoring piece under a full seating group, and it belongs to the practical 8x11 rugs class.

Color Palette: Black Ground, Ivory Border, Olive and Rose Detail

The field is a true black, dark enough that the tiny Herati motifs printed across it in camel, tan and warm gold appear to float. Inside the medallion the tone shifts entirely: soft salmon and dusty rose surround a paler olive and ivory core, with pinpricks of brick red, slate blue and forest green worked into each rosette. The spandrels move to a warm sand and camel tone that bridges the black field and the ivory border, and that ivory border is the brightest element on the rug, its palmettes shaded in rose, olive, pale blue and brown. Thin guard stripes in terracotta, green and navy separate every zone, and the outermost band returns to black so the whole composition is bracketed. Because roughly half the color is carried in silk, the same shade looks pale from one end of the room and deep from the other, which keeps a dark rug from reading flat under lamplight.

Origin and Weaving Quality

This rug was made in India, where most of the world's best contemporary hand-knotted work is now produced. The Mahi layout came out of the Tabriz weaving tradition, and Indian workshops adopted it decades ago because the design rewards exactly what those looms do well: a very high knot count, disciplined graph work and consistent wool. The back tells the story clearly, with fine even rows, no skipped wefts and crisp definition on every lattice diamond, which is the only way a motif this small stays legible instead of blurring into a speckle. The wool is clipped low so the drawing stays sharp, and the silk is used as accent rather than filler, concentrated in the medallion outlines and the lighter highlights. Build quality like this is what allows a new rug to be walked on for a generation and still hold its pattern.