9'8" x 13'2" Wool and Silk Mahi Tabriz Design Rug | Black Herati Fish Field | Brand New, Made in India

Hand-knotted in India in wool with silk highlights, this 9'8" x 13'2" rug carries the Mahi, or fish, drawing that Tabriz workshops made famous, and it is woven at a knot count fine enough to keep every one of those tiny rosettes clean and legible. From standing height the field reads solid black; step closer and it resolves into a dense diamond lattice of leaves, buds and 8 petal rosettes, with the silk catching light along the outlines of the medallion. The pile is full and even, the ivory fringe is hand-tied, and the black selvage runs straight on both sides. It is brand new and never used, ships with a certificate of authenticity, and sits squarely in the 10x13 rug footprint that most large living and dining rooms are planned around. As a hand-knotted Oriental rug, it is a piece of real weaving rather than a printed or machine-made lookalike.

Design and Motifs

The Mahi layout is built from a single repeating cell: a small rosette set inside a diamond, flanked by 4 curved lanceolate leaves that look like fish circling a pond, which is exactly where the name Mahi comes from. That cell repeats thousands of times across the field and again, at the same tiny scale, inside the medallion and spandrels, so the drawing never changes register. At the center sits a lobed diamond medallion on a beige and cream ground, ringed by scalloped lobes outlined in coral red, with slate blue and sage green stepping through each lobe, and a slender pendant reaching toward each end of the rug. Matching quarter medallions fill the 4 corners over an ivory ground. The border system is unusually deep for this design: a wide ivory main band of rosettes, palmettes and dark cartouche motifs joined by curling vines, framed by 6 narrow guard stripes of reciprocal barber-pole, running vine and micro-floral bands that step the eye down from border to field.

A Black Field Against Ivory, Cream and Coral

Color is what makes this piece easy to live with. The ground is a true black, not a dark navy and not a charcoal, and every motif drawn on it gains contrast because of that: ivory and cream rosettes, rust and terracotta buds, gold-brown leaf work, and small flickers of slate blue and sage green scattered through the lattice. The medallion reverses the scheme, a beige and cream ground laid over black, outlined in coral red with soft rose and salmon shading through the lobes, so the center reads warm and luminous against the dark field. The main border is ivory, clean enough to give the rug a bright perimeter that keeps a large floor from feeling heavy, with red, black and muted blue-green picking out the guard stripes. The silk in the pile sits mostly in the highlight lines and the medallion, and it shifts tone as you walk around the rug, pale rose from one direction and deeper coral from the other.

Woven in India in the Mahi Tabriz Tradition

India is where most of the world's best contemporary hand-knotted work is now produced, and this rug is a clear example of why. The Mahi pattern is one of the hardest all-over designs to weave well, because the repeat is small and any drift in the lattice shows immediately across a 13 foot length. Here the rows hold true from end to end, the medallion is centered, and the corners resolve properly rather than being cut short, which is a workshop discipline, not luck. The pile is tightly packed on a cotton foundation, so the rug lies flat, takes furniture without crushing, and can be vacuumed and walked on daily for decades. Wool gives the surface its durability and dry matte body; the silk is used sparingly, where it earns its place, in the outlines and the medallion. The back shows fine, even knotting with the pattern legible thread for thread, and the ends are secured with hand-tied ivory fringe.