9'10" x 13' Persian Tabriz Rug | Red Field, Ivory Star Medallion | Semi Antique, Excellent Condition

This is a full room-size Persian Tabriz at 9'10" x 13', hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation with a 3/8" pile that still stands upright across the whole field. It is a semi antique piece, so the dyes have had decades to settle into one another, yet the condition is excellent: even pile, straight sides, original ends and no restoration to work around. Proportionally it covers the same ground as most 10x13 Persian rugs while running 2 inches narrower, which helps in rooms where the furniture line is tight. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming the weave, the wool and the Persian origin.

Design and Motifs

The drawing is the classic Tabriz medallion layout, built outward from an 8 petal ivory rosette at the dead center of the rug. Around that rosette sit concentric rings of lobed cartouches and small vases, each one outlined in navy and filled with miniature blossoms, so the medallion reads almost like a stained glass window when you stand over it, as in the close-up photo. Navy pendants drop from the top and bottom of the medallion, and the open red field carries thin curling vines, split palmettes and loose sprays of flowers that are drawn in curvilinear line rather than village angles. All 4 corners are filled with large blue spandrels holding their own red and ivory floral cartouches, which frames the medallion and keeps the field from feeling empty. The surround runs to 5 bands: a wide dark brown main border of alternating rosettes and serrated leaves, flanked by salmon guard stripes of trailing vine and a pair of narrow reciprocal stripes at the outer edge.

The Color Palette, Red Over Indigo and Brown

The field is a saturated rose red, warm rather than brick, and it holds that tone evenly from end to end with only the gentle abrash you expect from wool dyed in separate lots. Against it the corner spandrels are a mid indigo blue, bright enough to separate clearly from the almost aubergine dark brown of the main border, and those two blues reading at different depths is what gives the rug its sense of layers. The medallion is where the palette opens up: a teal and sky blue ground, ivory and cream petals, soft apricot and salmon panels, olive and pistachio green leaves and small touches of rose pink, all contained by navy outlines. The salmon guard borders and the copper tone running through the outer stripes warm the whole perimeter, and ivory appears throughout as the outlining color that keeps each motif legible. On a light wood or pale stone floor this is a red rug that still reads as a multi-colored one from across the room.

Tabriz Weaving in Northwest Persia

Tabriz sits in the northwest corner of Persia and has been the country's design capital for centuries, the town where cartoons are drawn on paper first and then followed knot by knot, which is why its medallions are so symmetrical and its vines so evenly curved. Tabriz weavers measure fineness in Raj, the number of knots across a gereh of about 2.75 inches, and workshop pieces run from roughly 40 Raj for everyday room sizes up to 70 Raj for collector work. This piece belongs to the solid workshop tier: tight enough to carry small vase and blossom detail inside the medallion rings, with a dense 3/8" wool pile built for a room that gets used. The wool itself is the other half of the story, strong local fleece that takes dye deeply and polishes rather than dulls as it is walked on, which is exactly what you see in a semi antique Tabriz that has already lived in one home and come out of it with its pile intact.