9'6" x 13'2" Persian Tabriz Rug | Red Floral Field with Ivory Medallion | Excellent Condition

This is a full room size Persian Tabriz at 9'6" x 13'2", hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation with a 3/8" pile that still stands full and even across the whole field. The drawing is the classic Tabriz formula done properly: a lobed ivory and navy medallion floating dead center, four heavy gold and navy corner spandrels, and a red ground carried edge to edge with curling vine, palmette and small blossom work. It sits comfortably in the 10x13 Persian rug range, which is the size most large living rooms and formal dining rooms actually need. Every rug we ship leaves Freeport with a certificate of authenticity recording origin, materials, size and knotting.

Design and Motifs

The center is an 8 point lobed medallion outlined in ivory, with a red inner pool holding a single gold and coral rosette surrounded by small palmettes and hooked leaf forms. Above and below it run slender navy pendants that finish in a cypress-like finial, and the whole medallion sits inside a wider navy halo of split leaves and serrated saz foliage. The red field around it is never left empty: thin vines swing in symmetrical pairs and carry yellow, ivory and rose blossoms, tiny white daisies, blue lotus heads and dense sprays of leaf. The 4 corner spandrels break the scheme with a bold gold ground and a large navy palmette at the inner tip, which is a very typical northwest Persian device and gives the corners real weight. Framing it all is a wide navy main border of alternating rosette and vase-like palmette units joined by a continuous vine, flanked by narrow reciprocal guard stripes in ivory, brick and pale blue. The end finishes are plain woven with the original ivory fringe.

The Color Palette

The field is a true clear red, closer to a bright madder crimson than to a brown-toned rust, and because the wool is glossy it shifts lighter or deeper depending on which way you walk around the rug. The main border is the darkest value in the piece, a navy so deep it reads as black from standing height and only opens into blue when you crouch over it, which is exactly the contrast that makes the red field look as bright as it does. Between those two extremes the weavers used a very full accent range: ivory and cream in the medallion outline and guard stripes, a soft antique gold in the spandrels and border blossoms, mid sky blue and turquoise in the leafwork, small hits of forest green, and pale rose and apricot in the flower heads. The ivory fringe and the thin cream outline running around the field edge keep the navy from closing the design in. In a room with warm wood, brass or cognac leather, the red carries the temperature of the whole space; against cool grey walls it becomes the single strong color statement.

Tabriz Origin and Weaving Quality

Tabriz sits in the far northwest of Persia and has been the commercial and design capital of Persian weaving for centuries, the town that revived the medallion and spandrel layout and exported it to every other weaving center. Tabriz workshops count fineness in Raj, the number of knots across a gereh of about 2.75 inches, and the loom discipline shows here in the straightness of the borders, the symmetry of the paired vines and the fact that a rug this long holds its shape without waisting. The reverse, visible in the second photograph, shows tight regular rows of Turkish knots on a cotton warp, with the design reading crisply from the back, which is how a hand-knotted rug should look. The pile is good mountain wool with the natural lanolin still in it, cut at 3/8", which is the practical compromise that lets a Tabriz hold fine floral drawing while still taking daily traffic in a large room. This one is in excellent order, with full pile from selvage to selvage and no restoration to the ends.