9'11" x 13'5" Persian Tabriz Rug | Bote Paisley Field with Lobed Medallion | Excellent Condition

This is a full room size Tabriz at 9'11" x 13'5", hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation with a 3/8" pile that still stands up straight across the whole field. The drawing is the classic city formula done properly: a deep red ground carrying a lobed central medallion, pendants top and bottom, and a curling population of bote paisleys running corner to corner, all framed by a near black midnight border. It falls squarely into the 10x13 Persian rug bracket, which is the size most large living rooms and 8 seat dining tables actually need. Condition is excellent, with even pile, tight selvedges and clean ivory fringe as shown in the close-up photograph. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The center holds an 8 lobed medallion filled with rosettes and split leaf arabesques, finished at each end with a slim cusped pendant and matched by 4 corner spandrels in the same midnight tone. What sets this piece apart from the usual medallion Tabriz is the field itself: instead of quiet open red, the weaver filled it with an allover bote paisley design, large curved boteh in gold, sea green and sky blue, each one drawn with its own internal garden of blossoms and leaf tips. Fine vine scroll links them into a continuous lattice, with palmettes and small serrated leaves filling the gaps so no part of the ground reads as empty. The main border repeats cartouche-like green and gold palmettes on midnight, separated by curling vine, and is fenced on both sides by ivory guard stripes carrying a running red rosette meander. The corner resolution in the third photograph is clean, which is the mark of a drawn cartoon rather than a copied village pattern.

A Red Field Against Near Black Borders

The ground is a true madder red, warm and slightly deepened toward cherry where the pile lies one way and lifted toward brick where it lies the other. Against it, the medallion, spandrels and wide main border are worked in a midnight blue so dark it reads as black across a room, which is what gives the rug its graphic strength from a distance. Inside that dark framing the palette opens up: sea green and celadon in the border palmettes, sky blue and turquoise in the bote outlines, soft gold and mustard in the larger paisleys, salmon pink and pale rose in the flower heads, with ivory doing the work of separating everything. The close-up photograph shows those secondary colors clearly, including olive green stems and a warm apricot tone in the guard stripe. Ivory in the guard borders and the fringe keeps the red and near black from feeling heavy, and the whole scheme sits comfortably with dark wood, brass and cream upholstery.

Tabriz: The Weaving Capital of Northwest Persia

Tabriz sits in Azerbaijan province in the far northwest of Persia and has been the commercial and design capital of Persian weaving for centuries, the city that revived carpet production for export in the 19th century and that still sets the drawing standard other towns copy. Tabriz weavers work from a paper cartoon on vertical looms, count fineness in Raj across the width, and use a hook-ended knife that lets them pull tight, regular rows, which is why a Tabriz back looks as disciplined as its front. This piece shows that discipline in the way the bote repeat holds its scale from the medallion out to the border and in the straight, square handle of a rug this large. The wool is firm rather than plush, the 3/8" pile is even edge to edge, and a cotton foundation keeps a 9'11" x 13'5" rug lying flat instead of rippling under furniture. It is a rug built to take daily traffic in a main room for decades.