8'4" x 11'8" Persian Tabriz Mahi Rug | Wool & Silk Herati Fish Design | 60 Raj, Approx. 400 KPSI

This is the Mahi, or fish, design that made Tabriz famous, woven here at 60 Raj with wool and silk on a cotton foundation and never put on a floor. The field is a deep poma burgundy filled edge to edge with tiny diamond compartments, and the scalloped medallion at the center is drawn with the kind of fine outline work that only a knot count near 400 per square inch allows. At 8'4" x 11'8" it covers a full seating group or a dining table with chairs pulled out, which puts it squarely among the large Persian rugs most buyers are looking for. Every rug we ship carries a certificate of authenticity documenting origin, materials and construction.

Design and Motifs

The Mahi layout is a lattice of small diamonds, each holding a rosette flanked by two curved leaves, the pair of leaves being the fish that gives the pattern its name. That grid runs unbroken across the burgundy ground and straight through the ivory spandrels, which is the test of a well drawn Tabriz, since the repeat has to stay true even where the color changes. The medallion is built in 4 concentric scalloped rings, each ring lobed like a flower head, stepping from an ivory outer lobe through sage green to an apricot core. Above and below it sit 2 pendant cartouches with small hooked finials, and the 4 corner spandrels are scalloped in the same cadence. The main border carries linked palmettes and gray blue rosettes on ivory with curling brown vines, framed by narrow guard stripes of running floral heads in blue, rose and gold.

A Burgundy Field With Sage, Apricot and Ivory

The ground reads as poma burgundy, a red with a raspberry lean rather than a brick or orange one, and it holds its depth under lamplight instead of flattening out. Scattered across it are thousands of small ivory and cream rosettes, rust and cinnamon leaf pairs, charcoal outlines and occasional flecks of powder blue and green, so the field shimmers rather than sits flat. The medallion shifts the palette entirely: soft sage green, warm apricot and clean ivory, with dark navy pinpoints holding the drawing together. The spandrels blend mauve, pale celadon and blue in graded bands where the scalloped edges overlap. Around all of it the ivory border cools everything down, picking up rose pink, gray blue, olive and old gold. The silk sits in the outlines and the lighter motifs, and it catches light from one direction so the pattern changes as you walk past.

Woven in Tabriz, Northwest Persia

Tabriz sits in the northwest of Persia and has been the country's most organized weaving city for centuries, working from paper cartoons with a hook knife rather than by memory. Fineness there is measured in Raj, the number of knots across a gereh of roughly 2.75 inches: 40 Raj is commercial work, 50 is fine, and 60 Raj like this piece lands near 400 knots per square inch, the level where a Mahi lattice can be drawn small enough to look like printed fabric. The cotton warps are depressed, the pile is clipped low and even, and the selvages are wrapped tight in burgundy wool with full cotton fringe at both ends. Among Persian Tabriz rugs, the Mahi at this grade is the one that holds value, because the design rewards exactly the precision the city is built on.