9'10" x 13'3" Persian Tabriz Rug | Gonbad Dome Design | 500 KPSI Wool & Silk, Never Used

Gonbad is the Persian word for dome, and this 9'10" x 13'3" piece is the design done the way the better Tabriz workshops intended: a single vaulted ceiling projected flat onto the floor, drawn at approximately 500 knots per square inch over a silk foundation with a wool and silk pile. It was woven in the 1980s and never put into service, so the pile still stands full and even and the silk still throws light exactly as the weaver planned. Among 10x13 Persian rugs this is the size most American living rooms are built around, and a signed certificate of authenticity ships with the rug.

Design and Motifs

The whole field is one architectural illusion. From a small ivory rosette at dead center the drawing radiates outward in ring after ring of small compartments, each one a separate cell filled with its own palmette, vine or rosette, widening as it travels until it closes in a vast multi point star that fills the middle two thirds of the rug. Above and below the dome sit two arched mihrab panels on rose red grounds, each holding a black cartouche of scrolling arabesque. The 4 corners carry paired pendant cartouches, one blue and one rose within each corner, set against sage and ivory spandrels of curling leaf work. The border system runs 7 bands deep: a dark main border of 8 petal star rosettes and palmettes, flanked by ivory herati guard stripes and narrow reciprocal edges that frame the composition the way a cornice frames a ceiling.

A Multicolor Palette Led by Soft Teal and Rose

The dome itself reads as pale teal and soft aqua, cooled further by the silk in the pile, with alternating cells of aubergine, warm gold and terracotta that give the starburst its depth and make the rings read as separate courses of tile. Rose red carries the top and bottom arch panels and reappears in the corner cartouches, where a clear medium blue sits opposite it for contrast. Sage green, pale celadon and ivory handle the spandrels and guard borders, and a near black navy anchors the main border and the outlines throughout. Pink, mustard, brick and small touches of true white flicker through the individual flower heads. It is a genuinely multicolor Persian rug, but the tonality is soft rather than loud, which is why it settles easily against oak floors, walnut furniture and cream walls.

Tabriz Weaving and Why 500 Knots Matters Here

Tabriz sits in northwest Persia and has been the country's drawing room for centuries, the city where cartoon designers and master weavers work to the Raj system and where the Gonbad is treated as a test piece. A dome this size only holds together if every cell in every ring shrinks at exactly the right rate, and that arithmetic needs knot count: at roughly 500 knots per square inch on a silk warp, the weaver could keep the curved outlines clean all the way to the outermost ring instead of letting them go blocky. The reverse of the rug, shown against a ruler, is tight and regular with the pattern fully legible from the back, and the wool is blended with silk so the highlights lift. Collectors of Persian silk rugs will recognize the combination of silk foundation and part silk pile as workshop level production rather than village work.