9'8" x 13'2" Persian Tabriz Rug | Ivory Floral Medallion | Signed Cartouche

This is a signed Persian Tabriz in a room size that rarely turns up on an ivory ground, measuring 9'8" x 13'2" with a 3/8" wool pile over a cotton foundation. The weaver put his name in a small cartouche at the top of the border, which in Tabriz means the piece left a named workshop rather than an anonymous loom, and the drawing backs that up: the curves stay true, the two halves of the field mirror each other cleanly, and the vine work never thickens or wanders. The pile is even and the colors have settled into that soft, slightly powdery tone that only comes with age and honest use. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity that records origin, materials, size and knot construction, and this one is an unusually easy piece to place because the pale field lifts a dark room instead of weighing it down. If you are shopping 10x13 Persian rugs for a formal room, a signed example in this condition is the version worth holding out for.

Design and Motifs

The field is built around a large lobed medallion whose outline swells and pinches its way through roughly 16 scalloped lobes before resolving into pendants at the top and bottom. Inside it sits an 8 point star surrounded by a ring of rosettes, small carnation heads and stiff feathered leaves, all drawn small enough that the center reads as a separate composition when you stand over it. Four quarter spandrels repeat that language in the corners, each anchored by a big cupped palmette turned on its side. What keeps the rug from looking stiff is the open ivory ground between the medallion and the corners, filled only with loose sprays of blossoms and thin leafy stems that float rather than connect, a Tabriz habit borrowed from garden painting. The main border runs a continuous procession of eight and ten petal rosettes linked by a scrolling vine, flanked by narrow guard stripes of reciprocal trefoils and tiny meander flowers, so the eye is framed without being crowded.

The Ivory and Rose Color Story

The ground is a warm undyed ivory, closer to unbleached linen than to white, and it carries the whole rug. Over it the weaver worked a dusty rose that shades from pale blush at the medallion rim to a deeper old-rose in the spandrels, a tone that reads almost antique pink in daylight and turns clay colored under lamps. The medallion core drops into a clear mid blue with a burgundy red star at the very center and small chalk white blossoms scattered through it, so the middle of the rug holds the strongest contrast in the piece. Around that, burgundy red appears in short strokes on the rosettes and in the twin outer border bands, giving the whole field a deep frame. Sage and olive green fill the leaves, with sparks of saffron gold, terracotta and a light sky blue in the smallest flower heads. The overall effect is soft and light, a Persian rug that sits comfortably with pale walls, warm woods and worn leather rather than demanding a dark red room.

Tabriz Weaving and the Signed Cartouche

Tabriz sits in the northwest of Persia and has been the commercial and artistic capital of Persian weaving for centuries, the city where cartoon designers, master weavers and dyers all worked within a few streets of one another. Tabriz measures fineness in Raj, the number of knots across a gereh of about 2.75 in, and the discipline of that system shows here in how straight the borders run over more than 13 feet of length and how accurately the medallion lobes repeat on both sides of the center line. The back, seen against a ruler, shows a tight, regular knot with clean color separation and no drift in the rows, and the small woven cartouche in the upper border is the workshop's own mark of authorship. Signed Tabriz rugs in this size are worth seeking out precisely because the weaver had to stand behind the piece, and this one was clearly made to be looked at closely as well as walked on.