8'6" x 11'6" Oriental Rug | Black All-Over Tabriz Floral Design | Wool and Silk, Never Used

This is a hand-knotted Oriental rug woven in China to a classic Tabriz drawing, measuring 8'6" x 11'6" with a wool pile carrying silk highlights over a cotton foundation. It has never been used and arrives in perfect condition, with full pile, straight sides and clean ivory fringe, as the corner and roll-back photos show. At this footprint it sits squarely in the practical range of 9x12 Oriental rugs, large enough to carry a full seating group or a dining table with chairs pulled out. Every rug we ship comes with a certificate of authenticity confirming that it is genuinely hand-knotted, along with its measurements, materials and origin.

Design and Motifs

There is no central medallion here. Instead the field is filled edge to edge with a mirrored lattice of curved vines, the kind of composition collectors call all-over floral rugs, and the drawing is all curve, no angle. Thin brown stems arc out of the lower field and branch into cabbage roses, 8 petal and 12 petal rosettes, tulip buds, serrated leaves and tiny 4 petal sprigs that fill the spaces between the larger blossoms. Small ivory rosettes anchor the vertical axis at intervals, giving the eye a resting point without breaking the repeat. The main beige border runs a meandering vine of palmettes and rose sprays, framed on both sides by burgundy guard stripes and narrow ivory minor borders of running flowerheads. The corner spandrels resolve the border pattern cleanly, which is a fair test of a weaver's cartoon and one this rug passes on all 4 corners.

Color: A Black Ground Lit From Within

The field is a deep, even black, not a navy reading dark in photographs, and it is what makes the rest of the palette work. Against it the flowers come up in soft beige, cream, dusty rose, apricot and pale blue, with olive and sage green in the leaves and burgundy at the heart of the smaller blossoms. Brown carries the vine work, so the stems recede slightly and the flowers appear to float. The wide border shifts to a warm sand beige, almost champagne in the roll-back close-up, edged in burgundy and detailed in ivory, green and touches of black that echo the field. Where silk is used in the highlights it catches light at a different angle to the wool, so the roses shimmer and change tone as you walk past. Photographed from directly overhead the field looks graphic and inky; seen from a low angle on the floor it warms considerably and the beige border takes on a golden cast.

Origin and Weaving Quality

This rug was made in China, in the tradition of fine workshop weaving that took up the classic Tabriz repertoire and reproduces it at a high knot count. The tell is in the drawing: a curved vine and a rounded rose only hold their shape when the knots are small enough to describe an arc rather than a staircase, and the flower heads here are fully modeled, with 3 and 4 tones inside a single blossom. The pile is dense and clipped low, which is why the pattern reads so crisply in the detail photos, and the wool is springy with a clear sheen where the silk accents sit. Buyers comparing this against Persian city weaving may find it useful to read how Persian rugs and Oriental rugs actually differ. What you are getting here is honest hand-knotted work, never walked on, with the black ground and formal floral drawing that dresses a room without shouting.