9'11" x 12'11" Persian Tabriz Rug | Red Field, Ivory Medallion, Navy Border | Excellent Condition

This 9'11" x 12'11" Tabriz is a workshop piece in the classic northwest Persian idiom: a clear tomato red field, a layered ivory and navy medallion drawn dead center, and a wide navy border carrying ivory cartouches and paisley scrolls. The wool is dense and evenly clipped at 3/8", with the smooth, slightly lustrous surface that good Tabriz wool takes on once the pile has been sheared level. Both sides of the weave read the same, the fringes are original and intact, and the rug lies flat with no ripple. At just under 10 feet wide it settles naturally into the 10x13 Persian rug footprint that most formal rooms are built around. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The composition is built outward from a small rose and ivory rosette at the exact center, ringed by a navy octagonal core filled with red tulip heads and pale blue leaf forms. Around that sits the main ivory medallion, a lobed shape edged in scrolling vinework with pendant finials reaching top and bottom toward the border. Four large spandrels in soft blue fill the field corners, each packed with curling palmettes, serrated leaves and small bouquets rendered in rose, green and cream. The open red ground between medallion and spandrels is not left bare: scattered flower sprays and slender leafy branches float across it, keeping the eye moving without crowding the drawing. The main border runs deep navy with alternating ivory cartouches and paisley clusters, framed on both sides by pale blue guard stripes of running vine, and the corners resolve cleanly, which is the mark of a cartoon drawn properly rather than improvised at the loom.

Color Palette

Red carries the rug. It is a true warm tomato red, clear rather than brick or rust, and it holds an even tone from selvage to selvage with only the faint abrash you want to see in hand-dyed wool. Against it the border reads as a very dark indigo navy that goes almost black in low light, giving the design its weight and its outline. Between those two poles sit the blues: a soft powder blue in the spandrels and guard stripes, and a deeper cornflower in the vine work, both of which lift to turquoise under warm lamps. Ivory does the drawing, outlining the medallion, the cartouches and the corner brackets so the pattern stays legible from across the room. Accents of dusty rose, sage and olive green, pale gold and a little terracotta appear in the flower heads and leaves, and those small hits of green are what keep an otherwise red and blue rug from feeling flat.

Tabriz Origin and Weave

Tabriz sits in the far northwest of Persia and has been the commercial and artistic engine of Persian weaving for centuries, the city that revived the court medallion format for the export market and trained most of the master designers who followed. Tabriz weavers count fineness in Raj, the number of knots across a gereh of about 2.75 inches, and the town's workshops grade their output on that scale from ordinary commercial work up to the collector weaves. This piece belongs to the solid workshop tier: a cotton warp and weft foundation, a clipped 3/8" wool pile, tightly packed rows and a precise, curvilinear drawing that only holds together at a real knot count, as the reverse photograph with the ruler shows. It is the kind of Tabriz that was made to be lived on, heavy enough to stay put under furniture and hard-wearing enough that decades of use have left it in excellent condition.