8'9" x 13'3" Persian Tabriz Rug | Wool and Silk on Silk Foundation | Approx. 500 KPSI, Never Used

This is workshop weaving at the level Tabriz reserves for its best commissions: an 8'9" x 13'3" room-size rug knotted in wool with silk in a pile that sits on a full silk foundation, at roughly 500 knots per square inch. The rug has never been on a floor. The pile stands full and even, the silk in the pattern still throws light when you walk around it, and the ivory ground has the clean, unwalked tone that only an unused piece keeps. At this fineness the drawing behaves almost like a painting, with curved stems, tiny bud heads and shaded petals that a coarser weave simply cannot hold. Each rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The center is a dome, or gonbad, medallion: a small ivory and gold rosette inside a deep navy core, ringed by a radiating halo of pointed cartouches and shaded palmettes that expands outward like a struck bell. Around that halo the ivory field carries a dense, fluid vine network of blossoms, serrated leaves and small paisleys, all drawn in mirror symmetry across the long axis. Two large pendant cartouches sit above and below the medallion, and 4 corner spandrels in soft mauve repeat the same vocabulary in miniature, each one framing a tiny arabesque and a curling cloudband tendril. The main border runs a continuous scrolling vine of gold arabesques, teal palmettes and pink blossom sprays, held between narrow guard stripes on an ivory ground. A tight outer guard of alternating tulip and fan motifs finishes the edge, and the silk fringe at both ends is clean and full.

A Study in Ivory, Coral and Soft Peach

The field is a warm undyed ivory, closer to cream than white, which keeps the whole rug light without going cold. Against it the border reads as a dusty coral that shifts toward salmon rose under lamplight, and the medallion halo and spandrels sit in a paler peach that bridges the two. The detail work is where the palette earns its price: aubergine and rose pink petals, soft sage and moss green leaves, turquoise and cornflower blue accents in the blossom heads, gold and honey brown in the vine scrolls, and a single deep navy reserve at the center that anchors everything. The silk in the pile takes dye differently from the wool, so the coral and turquoise passages flash brighter than their wool neighbors as the light moves, an effect explained further in our guide to Persian silk rugs.

Tabriz: The Workshop Standard of Northwest Persia

Tabriz sits in the northwest of Persia and has been the country's most organized weaving city for centuries, with named ateliers, trained cartoon designers and master weavers working to a measured standard rather than by memory. Fineness there is counted in Raj, the number of knots across a gereh of about 2.75 in: 40 Raj is commercial, 50 is fine, and once a workshop commits to a silk foundation and a wool and silk pile it is aiming at the collector end, which is where a count near 500 knots per square inch lands. The silk warps are what make it possible, since they are thinner and stronger than cotton and let the weaver pack more knots into the same width while keeping the back flat and the outline crisp. You can see the payoff in the corner drawing, where the vine turns through the border without a single stepped line. Pieces of this grade in a true room size are the reason collectors shop Persian Tabriz rugs first.