9'9" x 12'10" Persian Tabriz Rug | Tomato Red Herati All-Over Field | Excellent Condition

A full room-size piece at 9'9" x 12'10", hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation and drawn in the northwest Persian Tabriz manner. The field is a warm tomato red carrying an unbroken Herati lattice, with one eggplant purple medallion set at the center and a deep blue main border running the perimeter. The pile measures 3/8" and is even from end to end, the sides and ends are intact, and the ivory wool fringe in the corner photograph is original to the weave. This is the kind of honest, heavy village-scale weaving people buy once and keep, and it sits squarely in the most useful of the 10x13 Persian rugs we carry. A certificate of authenticity ships with the rug.

Design and Motifs

The field is worked in the Herati, also called mahi or fish pattern: a diamond lattice with a small rosette at each intersection and four curved leaves flanking it like fish around a pond. Here the repeat is unusually lively, with the rosettes rendered in ivory, gold, teal and sky blue so the all-over design reads as a field of small flowers rather than a flat grid. At the center sits a single lobed medallion with a stepped, cloud-band silhouette outlined in yellow-green, its interior filled with an 8 petal rosette and small palmettes. The main border alternates lobed cartouches and large blossoms on the dark ground, and it is framed by narrow guard stripes of serrated leaves, reciprocal trefoils and a fine barber-pole band. The corners of the field carry curled cloud-band brackets rather than heavy spandrels, which keeps the pattern moving right up to the border line.

Tomato Red Field, Eggplant Purple Medallion

The dominant color is a clear tomato red, brighter and more orange-leaning than the brick reds of the Heriz group, and it holds its saturation across the whole field with only the gentlest abrash under raking light. Against it the medallion and the wide main border read eggplant purple, a blue-violet that goes almost black in shadow and opens into plum where the light catches the pile. Between those two poles the weaver used a small palette of accents with real discipline: ivory for the fish leaves and the border blossoms, soft gold and apricot for the medallion outline and the cartouches, teal green in the rosette centers, and a mid sky blue in the inner guard stripe that lifts the whole border away from the field. The effect is warm and high-contrast, and it pulls together the reds, blues and creams most traditional rooms already have.

Woven in the Tabriz Tradition of Northwest Persia

Tabriz sits in the northwest of Persia and has been the country's most productive weaving center for centuries, which is why its drawing conventions, the Herati field, the lobed central medallion and the cartouche border, spread through every workshop and village that traded with it. Persian Tabriz rugs of this scale are woven on a heavy cotton warp with the hook-knife, and this one shows the tight, square knotting and firm handle you can feel in the reverse photograph, where the pattern is as legible on the back as on the front. The wool is springy and has taken the dyes cleanly, the selvages are wrapped tight, and the weave is straight enough that the rug lies flat without help. It is a piece built for daily traffic and made to be walked on for generations.