8' x 10' Silk Oriental Rug | Tabriz Design Ivory Field | Central Medallion, Never Used

This is a hand-knotted silk rug in the classic Tabriz medallion layout, measuring 8' x 10' and never placed on a floor. The pile is 100% silk, which is why the field changes tone as you walk around it: from one end the ivory reads warm and buttery, from the other it lifts to a pale champagne. Every flower head, leaf tip and vine turn is drawn with the kind of precision that only a very high knot count allows, and the silk gives each outline a clean edge with no blur. At 8' x 10' it sits in the most useful of all sizes, which is why our selection of 8x10 area rugs moves faster than any other. A certificate of authenticity is issued with the rug, confirming it as a genuine hand-knotted piece with a 100% silk pile.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a many pointed star medallion in navy, its outline broken into dozens of small lobes and finials rather than a simple circle. Inside it sits a lime green ring, then a rose panel, then a burgundy core with an orange and turquoise rosette at the very middle. Two navy pendant cartouches drop from the top and bottom of the medallion, each one filled with a lily and small rose sprays. The ivory field around them carries a continuous vine of palmettes, roses, buds and curling acanthus leaves, with a ghosted pale tracery underneath the main drawing that only shows at close range. Rose and lime green spandrels arch into all 4 corners, each one built around a vase motif that sends flowering stems out along the curve. The main border is a wide navy band of connected floral sprays and small peacock-eye blossoms, held between a burgundy guard stripe, an ivory scroll band and a saffron gold outer edge that finishes the rug against the fringe.

A Palette Built on Ivory, Navy and Rose

Ivory dominates, covering most of the open field and reading as a soft cream that keeps the rug bright in rooms with limited daylight. Against it the navy of the medallion and the main border does the heavy lifting, dark enough at the border to frame the piece cleanly and slightly lighter, almost inky blue, where the border catches the light in the photographs. The third color is rose, a dusty coral pink used in the spandrels, the medallion panel and the guard scroll, and it is what stops the rug from reading as a plain blue and ivory piece. Lime green is used with real confidence in the spandrels and around the medallion ring, a fresh apple tone rather than an olive. Smaller quantities of burgundy, rust orange, saffron gold and bright turquoise are scattered through the flower heads, so the rug picks up a second set of accents at close range. The gold outer guard band and the pale sky blue seen on the reverse round out a palette that works with cream, walnut, brass and deep blue furnishings.

Tabriz Design, Silk Pile and Weaving Quality

The Tabriz medallion formula, a lobed central star with matching corner spandrels on an open field, is the most admired formal layout in the Oriental rug world, and it is also the hardest to execute because a curved line only stays curved at a high knot count. This piece is woven in China, where the finest silk workshops have specialized in this drawing for decades and where most of today's serious hand-knotted silk work is produced. The reverse tells you what you need to know: a tight, even grid of small knots on a cotton foundation, with the pattern reading as sharply from the back as from the front, and a hand woven tag numbering the rug 58802 at 8' x 10'. The silk pile is short and dense, so the surface is smooth to the hand and takes light like a satin rather than a wool. It has never been used, so the pile stands at full height and the colors are exactly as they left the loom.