8'6" x 11'6" Tabriz Design Rug | Burgundy Field, Navy Medallion Border | Hand-Knotted Wool, Never Used

A large, formal, completely unused piece: 8'6" x 11'6" of hand-knotted wool worked in the classical Tabriz medallion drawing, with a deep burgundy field, a blue black main border and an ivory lobed medallion at the center. The pile is a short 3/8", which is exactly what this kind of fine curvilinear drawing needs, since a long pile would blur the thin vine work. The back photo, shot against a 12 inch ruler, shows the tight, even knotting and the pale cotton foundation behind it. Every rug we ship carries our certificate of authenticity confirming it is a genuine hand-knotted Oriental rug, knotted by hand rather than machine made, and this one has never been laid in a home.

Design and Motifs

The layout is the textbook Tabriz format: a single lobed medallion floating on a densely filled field, answered by 4 corner spandrels, all enclosed by a wide floral main border and a pair of narrow ivory guard stripes. The medallion is built in three rings, an ivory core carrying an 8 petal rosette and small rose colored blossoms, a blue black surround filled with pale palmettes and lancet leaves, and a scalloped ivory outline that keeps the shape crisp against the red ground. Above and below it sit matching pendant cartouches. The field itself is not empty for a single knot: fine ivory vine scroll runs corner to corner, carrying hundreds of small rosettes, buds and serrated leaves in ivory, rose and soft sage. The spandrels break the scheme deliberately, filled with teal green and drawn with large split palmettes and curling saz leaves, which is what gives the rug its depth when you view it from an angle. The main border repeats a rosette and blossom vine on blue black, and the outer ivory guard runs a small diamond lattice that frames the whole piece cleanly.

Burgundy, Blue Black and Ivory in Detail

The field reads as a true burgundy, a brick leaning red with a cool undertone rather than an orange one, so it sits comfortably with mahogany, walnut and gray tones instead of fighting them. Against it the main border is blue black, close to midnight navy, and it is deep enough that from across a room it reads almost as a dark frame around a glowing center. Ivory does the work in between: it draws the vine, outlines the medallion, fills the medallion core and forms the two guard stripes, and it is a warm ivory with a faint cream cast rather than a bright white. Secondary tones are used sparingly and to real effect, with teal green filling the 4 spandrels, dusty rose and salmon in the border blossoms, and small touches of pale sage in the leaves. The short wool pile has a quiet sheen, so the color shifts slightly as you walk around the rug, the burgundy going darker from one end and brighter from the other.

Woven in China to the Tabriz Pattern

This rug is honestly made in China, in the workshop tradition that took on the classical Tabriz medallion cartoons and wove them at a genuinely fine count. That matters here, because a curved line, a lobed medallion edge and a vine this thin cannot be drawn at a coarse knot count; the weaver has to have enough knots per square inch to turn the line. Look at the back image and you can see the result, small even knot rows across a cotton warp and weft, with the design reading as sharply from the reverse as it does from the face. The wool is well spun and lustrous, the selvedges are tight, and the fringes are the original warp ends, finished and untouched. At 8'6" x 11'6" it covers a full seating group with furniture on the rug, which is the standard use for 9x12 area rugs, and it belongs in the better end of the hand-knotted Oriental rugs we import.