9'10" x 12'4" Persian Tabriz Rug | Allover Palmette and Vine Field | Ivory Floral Border

This 9'10" x 12'4" Tabriz is a workshop piece in the classic city manner: a deep raspberry red field carrying an allover palmette and vine pattern, held inside a wide ivory border of curling acanthus leaves and flower heads. There is no central medallion, which is the harder drawing to pull off, because the repeat has to balance across 118 inches of width without a focal point to hide behind. The pile is hand-spun wool on a cotton foundation, clipped evenly and still full, and the drawing stays crisp right into the corners. At this width and length it covers a full seating group or a 10 seat dining table, and it sits naturally with the other large Persian rugs we import directly. Every rug ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The field is built on a lattice of thin scrolling vines that cross and re-cross the red ground, pinning down large lobed palmettes, serrated split leaves, cypress-shaped buds and small 8 petal rosettes. Look closely at the center and you find a single round rosette holding the axis, with the pattern mirrored to left and right and top and bottom, so the repeat reads as ordered rather than busy. The inner guard stripe is a fine running flower chain on pale green; the main border is ivory, drawn with paired acanthus scrolls and tulip-like blossoms that reverse direction at each of the 4 corners, a detail that tells you the cartoon was properly resolved rather than simply cut to fit. This is one of the more sophisticated allover floral rug designs, and it is the reason a piece like this works under furniture: there is no medallion to bury.

Color: Raspberry Red Under an Ivory Frame

The ground is a saturated raspberry red, cooler and more crimson than a brick or rust red, and it shifts noticeably with the light because the wool takes the dye unevenly in the best way. Against it the palmettes are worked in sage and sea green, olive, warm brown and gold, with pale peach and salmon centers that keep the flowers from reading as dark blotches. Navy blue is used sparingly, mostly as outlining and in the small guard stripes, where it does the job of separating one tone from the next. The border swings the whole rug the other direction: a soft ivory field with the same green, brown, teal and red repeated at smaller scale, so the frame relates to the center without copying it. Cream fringe and an ivory outer guard finish the edges. The overall effect is warm and formal, easy alongside dark wood, brass and cream plaster.

Tabriz Weaving in Northwest Persia

Tabriz sits in the northwest of Persia and has been the country's most organized weaving city for centuries, working from drawn cartoons in proper workshops rather than from memory. Tabriz weavers measure fineness in Raj, the number of knots per gereh across the width, where 40 Raj is commercial, 50 is fine and 60 or 70 Raj belongs to the top ateliers. A room size floral like this one is the bread and butter of the city at a solid, honest weave: dense enough to hold the curved vine and the small rosettes cleanly, heavy enough in the wool to take decades of traffic. The weave is even across the back, the selvedges are tight and the pile is full, which is what you want to see before putting a rug of this size into a main room.