9'3" x 12'8" Persian Tabriz Rug | Rust Red Floral Medallion | Ivory Spandrels & Navy Cypress Border

A room-size Persian Tabriz drawn in the classic northwest formula: one navy medallion set on an open rust red field, ivory spandrels in all 4 corners, and a deep indigo main border packed with rows of flowering trees. The wool has the dry, slightly glossy handle that Tabriz weavers get from tightly spun highland fleece, and at 9'3" x 12'8" the piece reads as a single composition rather than a repeat, which is how a good medallion rug should sit under furniture. The pile is even from end to end, the selvedges are sound, the fringes are intact, and the condition is excellent with no repairs visible in the photographs. Every rug we ship carries a certificate of authenticity recording size, origin, materials and construction.

Design and Motifs

The center medallion is a rounded navy cartouche holding an 8 petal rosette at its heart, ringed by salmon and cream lotus blooms and small blue star flowers, then sheathed in a broad collar of tan and ivory arabesque leaves that reach out into the field. Slender pendants drop from the medallion at both ends, each finishing in a crowned palmette. The field around it is not crowded: large peach and cream palmettes, split saz leaves, blossoming tulip sprays and clusters of tiny comma-shaped buds float on long curving vines, with a tall flowering plant rising from each end of the field like a vase composition. The ivory spandrels are drawn separately, filled with 6 pointed orange blossoms on thin dark vines, and their serrated inner edge gives the rust field its distinctive scalloped shape. The main border is the piece's signature: a near-black navy ground carrying an alternating march of shaded cypress and willow forms and upright flowering shrubs, framed by ivory guard stripes of small blossom vine and a reciprocal outer edging.

The Color Palette Up Close

The field is a warm rust red with a brick and terracotta cast, lighter and more sunlit than a Kashan crimson, and it shifts a shade or two across the width the way naturally dyed wool does. Against it the border ground is a deep indigo navy that photographs almost black, which is what throws the rust forward. The drawing works in three light tones: chalky ivory in the spandrels and guard stripes, soft camel tan in the medallion collar and arabesques, and a pale peach to salmon in the palmette petals and lotus heads. Green appears as the teal and blue-green in the leaves, leaf sprays and the shaded cypress forms in the border, cool enough to balance all that warmth. Cobalt and mid blue rosettes are scattered through the field as small punctuation points, with occasional aubergine and deep burgundy leaves adding weight. It is a palette that suits warm woods, brass and cream plaster, and it sits comfortably among traditional red and burgundy Persian rugs without going dark.

Tabriz Weaving and the Khoy District

Tabriz sits in the far northwest of Persia and has been the country's design capital for centuries, working on a cotton foundation with a Turkish knot and measuring its own fineness in Raj, the number of knots counted across a gereh of about 2.75 inches. Khoy, the town credited in this rug's history, lies northwest of Tabriz and weaves in the same tradition, to the same standards and with the same cartoon-based drawing discipline, which is why pieces from those outlying towns are sold within the Tabriz group. You can see that discipline here: the medallion is centered, the corner spandrels match one another, the curved vines hold their line through the turns, and the back shows a tight, regular knot with very little skew, the mark of a taut loom and a competent pair of weavers rather than a rushed commercial run. The cotton warp keeps a rug this size flat and square, and highland Tabriz wool is famously hard-wearing underfoot. At 9'3" x 12'8" it covers the same footprint as standard 9x12 Persian rugs with several inches to spare at each end, so an 8 seat table or a full seating group will still land inside the field rather than on the border.