9'9" x 12'11" Persian Tabriz Rug | Signed Turquoise Blue Field with Red Floral Medallion | Excellent Condition

A signed workshop piece in a room size that sells itself, this 9'9" x 12'11" Persian Tabriz is hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation with a 3/8" pile that still stands up crisply across the whole field. The weaver put his name in a small cartouche woven into the ivory inner border, which is what a Tabriz master does when he is satisfied with the finished piece, and it is the first thing a collector looks for. The drawing is classical: a lobed red medallion with an ivory star center floating on an open turquoise blue ground, red corner spandrels, and a wide red main border of scrolling palmettes. In a footprint this size it reads as one of the more usable 10x13 Persian rugs we carry, large enough to carry a full seating group without the pattern shrinking to noise. Condition is excellent, with even pile and clean, straight sides, and the rug ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The layout is the classic Tabriz medallion and corner formula, drawn with the curved line that the town is known for. At the center sits a lobed red medallion topped and tailed by pendant finials, with an ivory cartouche inside it holding an 8 petal rosette star in blue, camel and rose. Around that core the weaver worked palmettes, cloud band tendrils and small serrated leaves in olive green, camel and ivory. The rest of the blue field is not left empty: a continuous vine scroll travels corner to corner, carrying lotus heads, split leaves and tiny five petal blossoms, so the ground stays busy without ever crowding the medallion. Red spandrels fill all 4 corners with matching vinework and are outlined in ivory, which pulls the eye back to the center. The main border repeats a red ground with alternating palmettes and rosettes on a pale scrolling vine, framed by ivory guard stripes of running flowerheads and a narrow navy outer line. It is a well balanced cartoon, drawn by someone who understood how the pattern would look from across a room rather than only up close.

A Turquoise Blue Field Against Tomato Red

Color is the reason this rug stands apart from the usual navy and rust Tabriz. The field is a bright turquoise blue, a cleaner and more open shade than the deep indigo most weavers reach for, and it gives the whole piece an unusually light, almost luminous ground. Sitting on it is a warm tomato red in the medallion, the spandrels and the main border, a true madder-toned red rather than a cold burgundy, so the contrast is strong but never harsh. The ivory of the guard borders and the medallion center supplies the breathing room between the two, and the outlines of vines and leaves are picked out in that same soft cream. The secondary palette is where the weaving gets interesting: olive and sage green in the leaves, camel and old gold in the palmettes, dusty rose and pale pink in the smaller blossoms, and small hits of dark navy and black-brown for definition. Under lamplight the blue deepens and the red glows; in daylight the turquoise dominates and the rug feels cool and fresh.

Tabriz: The Workshop City of Northwest Persia

Tabriz sits in the far northwest of Persia and has been the country's commercial weaving capital for centuries, the place where the cartoon-based workshop system was refined and where fineness is still measured in Raj, the count of knots per gereh across the width. Tabriz weavers use a hook-ended knife and work to a drawn cartoon, which is why the curved lines here stay true and the medallion is symmetrical end to end, something village weaving rarely achieves at this scale. The back of this rug, shown against a ruler, is tight and even with a firm handle and clean, regular rows, and the wool is the dense highland fleece that gives Tabriz rugs their long service life. The signature in the inner border is the detail that matters most to a collector: unsigned Tabriz rugs are common, signed ones came out of named ateliers where the master was willing to stand behind the piece. Well kept examples like this one are the reason Tabriz remains the most collected group in Persian weaving.