9'7" x 13'7" Tabriz Mahi Rug | Wool & Silk Herati Fish Pattern | Black Field, Made in India

This is a brand new, never used hand-knotted rug in the Tabriz Mahi design, woven in India in wool with silk highlights on a cotton foundation. At 9'7" x 13'7" it covers a full seating group or a 8 to 10 chair dining table without crowding the walls, which puts it squarely in the practical range of 10x14 rugs. The drawing is tight and disciplined: a black octagonal field packed with miniature fish motifs, a beige medallion at the center, and a black main border of palmettes and curling leaves. Every rug we ship travels with a certificate of authenticity stating origin, materials, size and knotting.

Design and Motifs

Mahi means fish, and the whole field is built from it: a diagonal lattice of tiny lancet leaves curving around minute rosettes, repeated thousands of times across both the black inner ground and the beige outer field. At the center sits a pointed beige medallion outlined in ivory, filled with the same lattice and carrying an 8 petal rosette surrounded by curling palmettes and slender cypress-like leaf forms. Stepped pendants run above and below it, and two small floral cartouches float at the sides of the scalloped black cartouche that frames the whole composition. The corner spandrels repeat the beige lattice with delicate ivory outlines, so the eye reads the medallion, the black field and the pale corners as three layers of the same pattern. The main border is a black ribbon of large lobed palmettes and serrated leaves, flanked by rose and grey-green guard stripes of small blossoms and a fine sawtooth minor stripe on both edges.

A Black, Beige and Olive Color Palette

The base note is a deep charcoal black, used for the inner field, the main border and the flat selvage, and it is what makes everything else read clearly. Against it the fish lattice is drawn in warm rust, soft brown, muted olive and small flecks of ivory, so from a standing distance the black field looks like dark bronze rather than flat black. The outer field is a warm oatmeal beige with the same lattice in brown and brick tones, and the central medallion moves through beige, dusty rose, sage and a single navy accent at the heart of the rosette. The border palmettes bring in olive green, ochre and faded rose against black, while the guard stripes add a cool grey-green that keeps the warm tones from turning heavy. The silk is used sparingly in the outlines and the medallion, and it catches light as you walk past, lifting the pale areas a shade brighter than the surrounding wool.

Made in India: Weaving Town and Weaving Quality

India is where most of the world's best contemporary hand-knotted work is made today, and this piece shows why. The Mahi pattern is unforgiving: the motifs are small, the lattice must stay perfectly on the diagonal across nearly 14 feet, and any slack in the knotting shows up immediately as a wobble in the grid. Here the rows are even, the field lattice tracks straight from end to end, and the medallion outlines hold a clean curve rather than a stair-stepped line, which only happens at a genuinely fine knot count. The pile is clipped low so the drawing stays crisp, the cotton warps are hand-tied into an even fringe, and the black selvage is wrapped tight and square. If you are comparing this against other traditional pieces, our guide to what separates a Persian rug from a broader Oriental rug explains exactly where a piece like this one sits.