8' x 11'5" Persian Tabriz Mahi Rug | Ruby Red Herati Fish Design | Wool & Silk Pile, Never Used

This 8' x 11'5" Persian Tabriz is a Mahi, the fish pattern that made Tabriz famous, and it is a dense, tightly drawn example that has never been on a floor. The pile is wool with silk worked through the medallion outlines, the pendants and parts of the lattice, so the surface shifts from matte to bright as you walk around it. It sits squarely in the most useful range of 8x11 Persian rugs, large enough to carry a full seating group yet still proportioned for a normal room. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity that records the origin, materials and knot construction.

Design and Motifs

The whole field is filled with the herati, or mahi, repeat: a small diamond lattice, each compartment holding a rosette flanked by 4 curved lanceolate leaves that read as fish circling a pool. The repeat is drawn small and counted evenly across the full 8' width, which is the real test of a Mahi weaver. At the center sits a scalloped medallion on a beige ground, its own interior filled with a finer herati grid, and inside that a black cartouche scattered with cream 4 petal blossoms and red rosettes. Slender pendants run north and south, matching quarter medallions anchor the 4 corners, and the corner spandrels are cut in the same stepped, scalloped outline. The main border is an ivory turtle palmette and vine band, framed by several narrow guard stripes in camel, olive and navy, ending in plain red selvages and hand tied cotton fringe.

A Ruby Red Field With Beige, Olive and Brown

The ground is a deep ruby red that darkens toward wine where the outlines of the lattice crowd together, which is why the overhead studio photograph reads much deeper than the close-ups. Against it the tiny motifs are picked out in cream, navy, olive green, soft rose and a warm tobacco brown, so the field never goes flat: from a standing height it looks like a single rich red, and up close it breaks into 5 or 6 distinct colors. The medallion and spandrels bring the palette up into beige and pale gold, with a brown outline separating them from the field, and the main border runs on a clean ivory ground with brick red rosettes, olive leaves and camel palmettes. It is a warm, formal color scheme that sits comfortably with dark wood, brass, leather and cream upholstery, as the styled room photograph shows.

Tabriz Weaving and the Mahi Tradition

Tabriz sits in the northwest of Persia and has been the country's most organized weaving city for centuries, working on vertical looms with a cotton foundation and measuring fineness by the Raj system, the number of knots counted across a gereh of about 2.75 in. The Mahi is the city's signature commercial design and also its hardest, because a repeating lattice shows every error in the count. On this piece the back, visible in the folded corner photograph, is tight and regular, the knot rows are straight, and the pile has been clipped low so the small motifs stay legible. That low, dense clip is also what makes a Tabriz of this type wear so well under furniture, and with the silk restricted to the highlights rather than the traffic areas, the rug is built to be used rather than protected.