9'4" x 12'11" Persian Tabriz Rug | All-Over Shah Abbasi | Tomato Red & Navy Excellent Condition

A full room size Tabriz woven in the classic city formula: a tomato red ground covered edge to edge with palmettes and scrolling vine, framed by a deep navy main border. The pile is wool at 3/8", handled on a cotton foundation, and the handle is firm and flat, the way a well woven Tabriz should feel underfoot. At 112" by 155" it covers a seating group or a 10 seat dining table without crowding the walls, and the drawing reads cleanly from across a room because the artist kept the vine open rather than packing the field. Colors are clear and even from end to end, the selvages are sound and the white cotton fringe is intact. Every rug we ship leaves with a certificate of authenticity recording the size, origin, materials and hand-knotted construction, so you have the weave on paper as well as under your feet.

Design and Motifs

There is no medallion here. This is an all-over Shah Abbasi design, built on a lattice of thin vines that climb the length of the field and hand off to a repeating set of blossoms. Three motifs carry the pattern: a large fan shaped palmette in ivory and teal, an 8 petal rosette set inside a lobed cartouche, and a small lanceolate leaf that curls back on itself at each junction. The repeat is mirrored down the center line, so the two halves answer each other while the individual flower heads keep changing color, which is what stops a dense all-over field from looking printed. The navy main border runs a palmette and leaf meander with reciprocal cream guard stripes on both sides, and a slim turquoise outer band holds the whole composition together. The corners are resolved properly, with the border motif turning rather than being cut off at the miter, a detail that separates workshop drawing from village shortcuts.

The Tomato Red and Navy Palette

The field is a true tomato red, warmer and more orange than the cool madder of a Kashan and brighter than the brick tone of a village rug, and it holds that same value from one end of the 155" length to the other. Against it the main border reads as a dark indigo navy that looks almost black in low light and opens up to true blue in daylight. Between those two poles the weaver worked a narrow range of secondary tones: chalky ivory and cream in the palmette petals, a soft teal and a dusty mid blue in the leaves, and small touches of salmon and peach that pick up the field color in the flower centers. Thin cream outlines separate every motif from the ground, which is why the vine stays legible rather than bleeding into the red. If you are decorating around this palette, it sits with walnut and mahogany, with brass, and with cream or oatmeal upholstery, and it belongs squarely in the family of red Persian rugs that anchor a formal room instead of disappearing into it.

Tabriz Weaving and Quality

Tabriz sits in the northwest of Persia and has been the country's most organized weaving city for centuries, working on a tight cotton warp with a flat, controlled beat that produces a rug you can lay dead flat over a large floor. Weavers there count fineness in Raj, the number of knots per gereh of about 2.75 inches across the width, and the city's reputation rests on the same thing this rug demonstrates: curved line drawing executed at scale without the vine wobbling. The wool is clipped low at 3/8", which is typical of Tabriz work and part of why the palmette outlines stay so crisp, and a low even pile in a room size format like this wears slowly and vacuums easily. Pieces at this width are the most useful Persian format in an American house, which is why well drawn 9x12 Persian rugs in good color are the hardest category to replace once they sell.