9'8" x 13'4" Persian Tabriz Rug | Mahi Fish Field & Ivory Medallion | 60 Raj Wool & Silk

This 9'8" x 13'4" Persian Tabriz is a workshop piece in the classic Mahi idiom, woven in fine wool with silk detailing on a cotton foundation and finished at roughly 400 knots per square inch, the 60 Raj grade that Tabriz weavers reserve for their better commissions. The field carries a dense, tiny-scale Herati fish repeat that runs uninterrupted from selvedge to selvedge, and out of it rises a tiered ivory medallion with matching corner spandrels. It is a large-room rug that behaves like a fine one: low, even pile, crisp drawing, no sag and no lippage when laid flat, and enough weight underfoot that it settles immediately. Among 10x13 Persian rugs this is the size most people buy once and keep. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity documenting origin, materials and knot count.

Design and Motifs

The drawing is Mahi, the Herati fish pattern, built from a small diamond lattice with a rosette at each intersection and two lancet leaves curving beside it like fish flanking a pond. On this piece the repeat is drawn very small, which is only possible at this knot count, and it is what gives the field its shimmering, granular texture in the photographs. At the center sits a scalloped oval medallion in several concentric tiers: an outer ring of fine vinework, a band of trellis, and an inner cartouche with an 8 petal rosette at its heart, topped and tailed by small pendant finials. The 4 corner spandrels repeat the same ivory ground and the same scalloped outline, so the field reads as one continuous composition rather than a medallion dropped onto a background. The border system runs to 7 bands: a wide main border of linked palmettes and rosettes on an olive ground, framed by reciprocal guard stripes, a running floral minor border, and a plain dark outer stripe that gives the whole rug its clean edge. Ends finish in a black kilim with ivory cotton fringe.

A Charcoal Field Lit by Ivory, Olive and Gold

The palette is quiet and unusually sophisticated for a Tabriz. The ground is a near-black charcoal that warms to a deep coffee brown under lamplight, and the Herati repeat is picked out across it in beige, oatmeal and pale gold, so from standing height the field reads as a soft mottled bronze rather than a hard black. The medallion moves through ivory at the outer scallops into cream, then into a warm honey gold at the center, with fine outlines in sage and slate that keep the tiers legible. Spandrels follow the same ivory-to-gold progression. The main border is a muted olive green, a color Tabriz workshops handle better than almost anyone, filled with rosettes in ivory, apricot, rust, aubergine and small touches of teal, and the silk in the highlights catches light along those flower heads. The outer stripe drops back to black, which frames everything and makes the rug easy to place against dark wood, cool grey walls or a neutral sofa. There is no strong red in the face of this rug, which makes it a far easier neighbor to existing furnishings than a traditional red ground Persian.

Tabriz: The Town and the Weave

Tabriz sits in northwest Persia and has been the organizing center of Persian carpet weaving for centuries, the place where design studios, master weavers and dyers worked as a single industry rather than as scattered village looms. Tabriz grades its work by Raj, the number of knots counted across one gereh of about 2.75 in of width: 40 Raj is commercial goods, 50 Raj is fine, and 60 Raj, this rug, is roughly 400 knots per square inch and the point at which a weaver can draw a Mahi repeat this small without the lattice going soft. Tabriz weavers also work on a taut cotton warp using a hook-ended knife, which is why the rug lies dead flat and why the selvedges are straight over nearly 13 ft of length. The pile is clipped low so the detail stays visible, and the silk is used sparingly, in the flower heads and the medallion outlines, rather than across whole areas, which is the restrained way the good workshops use it.