9'3" x 12'3" Chinese Tabriz Design Rug | Wool and Silk All-Over Floral | Brand New, Never Used

This is a hand-knotted Oriental rug woven in China in the classic Tabriz manner, a deep burgundy field drawn edge to edge with flowering vinework and framed by a near-black border. The pile is wool with silk worked into the flower heads and leaf tips, which is why the blossoms catch the light while the ground stays matte and quiet. At 9'3" x 12'3" it sits squarely in the most useful of all 9x12 area rug proportions, large enough to carry a full seating group or a 10 seat dining table with the chairs pulled back. It has never been used, the pile stands full and even across the whole surface, the ivory cotton fringe is untouched, and it ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming it as a genuine hand-knotted piece.

Design and Motifs

There is no central medallion here. Instead the weaver ran a mirrored all-over composition down the field, built from split-leaf arabesques, curling saz leaves, large palmettes and small 8 petal rosettes strung along thin ivory vine lines that never stop moving. Look closely at the field photographs and you will find lotus heads, buds, tulip forms and cloud-band scrolls tucked between the larger blossoms, each one outlined so the drawing stays readable rather than turning into a blur of color. The rug carries three borders: a wide main band on the dark ground filled with turtle palmettes and rose sprays, flanked by camel guard stripes carrying a running vine and small cartouches, with a thin rose-red line separating each one. All 4 corners resolve cleanly, the border pattern turning the corner without a break or an improvised join, which is the quickest test of a well drawn cartoon and careful weaving.

Color Palette

The field is a true burgundy, a deep wine red with a brown undertone rather than a bright fire red, and it reads darker in low light and warmer under lamps. Against it the main border is so dark a green that at a glance it passes for black, and only in the close-up photographs does the forest tone separate out from the ink. Between field and border runs a camel guard band, a soft tan that lifts the whole frame and keeps the two dark grounds from crowding each other. The floral work carries the rest of the range: ivory and cream in the vine lines and petal outlines, dusty rose and salmon pink in the palmettes, sage and teal green in the leaves, pale sky blue and navy in the smaller blossoms, with occasional gold and rust flickers. The silk sits mainly in the pinks and pale blues, so those details flash as you walk past while the burgundy ground holds steady.

Origin and Weaving Quality

China has woven hand-knotted rugs for centuries, and its export workshops built a serious reputation for reproducing classical Tabriz cartoons with high knot counts and disciplined, curvilinear drawing. This piece comes out of that tradition: a cotton warp and weft foundation, wool pile with silk accents, and a knot fine enough to hold flower heads only a few knots wide without losing their shape. The back shows even, tight rows with no slack or drawn-in edges, the selvedges are firmly overcast in burgundy wool, and the rug lies dead flat with straight sides and square corners. Handle it and you feel the difference between a fine hand-knotted piece and a thick commercial weave: the body is supple and dense rather than stiff, with a compact pile that will take decades of traffic in a dining room or living room and still show its drawing clearly.