9'9" x 13'2" Persian Tabriz Rug | Red Field, Sky Blue Medallion | 1980s Workshop Weave

This is a full room-size Persian Tabriz from the 1980s, hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation and still carrying a dense, even pile from border to border. At 9'9" x 13'2" it sits in the most useful large format we sell, wide enough to float a sofa group on or to seat a 10 chair table, and it belongs squarely in the 10x13 Persian rugs group buyers shop when they are furnishing a main living space. The drawing is classic workshop Tabriz: a layered sky blue medallion on a brick red field packed with scrolling vinery, ivory corner spandrels, and a deep navy main border. Condition is excellent, with full pile, straight sides and tight original ends, and it ships with our certificate of authenticity confirming origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a 16 point star medallion built in three tiers: a navy core with a small ivory boss and curling leaf forms, a wide sky blue chamber filled with split palmettes and tendrils, and a serrated outer frame outlined in salmon and ivory. Above and below it, matching pendant finials anchor the long axis. The field around the medallion is not left open. It is covered in an all over lattice of curved vines, 8 and 10 petal rosettes, lotus palmettes and small cypress-like buds, drawn in the fluid curvilinear style Tabriz cartoon designers are known for. Ivory spandrels fill all 4 corners with the same vine work in reverse value, giving the red field a clear oval shape without a hard outline. The border system runs 5 bands deep: a narrow ivory meander, a blue floral guard, the wide navy main border of reciprocal scrolling arabesques and ivory palmettes, then matching guards on the outside, finishing at a plain red outer edge.

Color: Brick Red Ground, Navy Frame, Sky Blue Center

The field reads as a warm brick red with a slight tomato cast in direct light, and because the wool takes dye unevenly in the best way, the ground has gentle tonal movement rather than a flat printed look. Against that red, the medallion is a cool sky blue, almost turquoise where the light hits the pile one way, and it is the single element the eye goes to first. The navy main border is very dark, close to indigo, which stops the red at the edge and makes the ivory palmettes inside it look almost lit. Secondary colors are used sparingly and deliberately: ivory and soft cream in the spandrels and guard stripes, pale salmon and old rose in the smaller rosettes, a muted gold or camel in the leaf tips, and touches of mid blue and teal in the vine work. The closing color note is the plain red outer band and the ivory fringe, which keep the whole piece reading as red from across a room while the blues do the detail work up close.

Tabriz Origin and Weaving Quality

Tabriz, in the northwest of Persia, is the commercial and technical capital of Persian weaving, and it is the town that formalized the Raj system for counting knots across the width of a rug. Tabriz weavers work from a paper cartoon drawn by a professional designer, which is why a piece like this holds its curved lines, keeps the medallion perfectly centered and repeats the border rhythm without drift over 13 feet of length. The knotting here is a solid, honest room-size workshop weave rather than a 60 Raj master piece: the wool is tightly packed, the back shows clean straight rows on a cotton warp, and the pile is heavy enough to take decades of real use in a living or dining room. That combination, good local wool, disciplined drawing and a 1980s weave in perfect condition, is exactly why this generation of Persian Tabriz rugs remains the safest large-format buy in the market.