8'5" x 11'5" Persian Tabriz Rug | Signed Floral Medallion | Semi-Antique 1980s, Excellent Condition

This is a signed Persian Tabriz rug from the 1980s, hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation and measuring 8'5" x 11'5". The weaver signed the piece in a small woven cartouche set into the ivory guard border, which is the mark of a workshop loom rather than a village commission. The pile is still full and even across the whole field, the selvages are intact and the ends are secure, so this reads as a semi-antique in excellent condition rather than a worn survivor. At this footprint it covers a standard seating group or a dining table with chairs pulled out, and it sits comfortably among 8x11 Persian rugs that need to anchor a whole room. Every rug we ship leaves Freeport with a certificate of authenticity recording origin, materials, age and size.

Design and Motifs

The drawing is classic curvilinear Tabriz. A lobed ivory medallion sits dead center, its core filled with a navy star cartouche and tight rings of rosettes, with serrated acanthus leaves curling off the outer lobes. Above and below it are two pendant palmettes, and the red ground between them carries a continuous all-over vine: cusped palmettes, carnations, tulip buds, small eight petal rosettes and curling cloudband sprays, all mirrored across both axes so nothing in the field feels accidental. The 4 corner spandrels repeat the medallion vocabulary in ivory, then the field is contained by a teal inner band of leaf and blossom work, a wide ivory main border of alternating palmettes and vase forms, and a pair of narrow red and navy guard stripes. The close-up photographs show how cleanly the outlines are drawn, with dark brown and ivory contour lines holding each flower head apart from the next instead of letting the pattern blur.

A Study in Red, Ivory, Teal and Blue

The field is a true madder red, deep and slightly cool, with the faint vertical abrash you expect from hand-dyed wool, which keeps the large open ground alive rather than flat. Against it the medallion and spandrels are a warm oatmeal ivory that has mellowed toward cream, and the florals are picked out in rose pink, salmon, pale sky blue, strong cobalt and near-black indigo. The inner border is the green noted in the specs, a muted sea-green teal that reads almost slate in low light and gives the red field a cooling frame. Olive and walnut brown appear in the leafwork and outlines, with small touches of mustard and soft peach inside the border blossoms. Buyers shopping red and burgundy Persian rugs for a room with wood tones or navy upholstery will find this palette traditional but not heavy, because the ivory border carries so much light.

Tabriz Weaving and the Signed Workshop Tradition

Tabriz, in the far northwest of Persia, is the city that made the curved line a commercial standard. Its workshops measure fineness in Raj, the number of knots across a gereh of roughly 2.75 inches, and the town trains both designers and master weavers, which is why a Tabriz medallion resolves its curves instead of stepping them. This piece is a workshop product of that system: a cartooned symmetrical design, a tight cotton warp, wool worked to a short even clip and a signature cartouche worked straight into the border rather than added after. The reverse, visible in the folded-back photograph, shows small regular knot nodes and crisp color changes, confirming the weave is firm and the handle supple. For anyone learning to read age and provenance in this kind of piece, our guide on how to date an Oriental rug explains what the back, the wear pattern and the dye behavior tell you about a 1980s weave like this one.