9'7" x 12'11" Persian Tabriz Rug | Sarouk Floral Medallion Design | Fine Wool Pile

This is a full room size Persian piece, 9'7" x 12'11", hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation and drawn in the classic Sarouk floral medallion layout: a clear red field, a dark lobed centerpiece, and a wide navy border of flowering shrubs. The pile stands at 3/8", even from end to end, and the reverse shows a tight, regular knot with the drawing reading just as crisply from the back as it does from the front. At just under 13 feet long it covers a seating group or a dining table without crowding the room, which puts it squarely among the most usable 10x13 Persian rugs we carry. Condition is excellent, with good body and full pile throughout, and the rug ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming its handmade Persian origin.

Design and Motifs

The field is organized around a cusped, almost lantern-shaped central medallion outlined in ivory, with a small white cartouche at its heart and layers of red, blue and brown florets radiating out from it. Around that centerpiece the weaver has scattered a gallery of naturalistic plants: blossoming branches with 5 petal white flowers, pale blue weeping willow sprays that hang like feathers, and small rosette bouquets, each drawn as a separate specimen rather than as a repeating grid. The field itself is contained inside a large ivory-edged cartouche shape, and the space between that outline and the border is filled with dense blue vinework holding palmettes and leaves. Four corner squares carry an 8 petal rosette on a pale ground, an unusual and very decorative touch that breaks up the corners. The main border runs a procession of flowering shrubs and cypress-like trees on dark ground, flanked by two ivory guard stripes of running vine and by a fine outer stripe that finishes the drawing cleanly.

Reading the Color: Red, Blue and Dark Brown

The dominant color is a true tomato red, clear and slightly warm rather than brick or rust, and because the field is left largely open the wool's natural luster shows plainly when you walk around it. Against that red the weaver has set two distinct blues: a light cornflower blue that fills the vine ground surrounding the field and reappears in the willow sprays, and a much deeper navy that anchors the medallion core, the corner rosettes and the main border. Dark brown sits underneath both, doing the outlining work and adding weight where the pattern is densest. Ivory carries the medallion outline, the field cartouche and the guard stripes, keeping the composition legible from across the room, and small touches of soft green in the leaves and shrubs plus rose pink in the border blossoms round the palette out. In daylight the red reads bright and lively; under lamplight it deepens toward burgundy and the blues quiet down.

Tabriz Weaving and the Sarouk Drawing

Tabriz sits in northwest Persia and has been the country's most commercially disciplined weaving city for well over a century, known for accurate cartoon work, tight symmetry and a firm, flat handle that comes from weaving on a cotton warp and weft with a well-controlled beat. Tabriz workshops have always been comfortable borrowing designs from other towns and executing them to their own standard, and that is exactly what happened here: the composition is pure Sarouk in spirit, with its open red ground, detached floral sprays and cusped medallion, but the execution has the even knotting, straight selvedges and precise curvilinear line associated with Persian Tabriz rugs. The reverse confirms it, with rows sitting parallel and consistent across the full 115" width, which is what allows a rug this large to lie flat and wear evenly for decades. Wool of this quality, at a 3/8" pile, is what keeps the colors bright and the surface resilient under real traffic.