9'9" x 13'9" Chinese Oriental Wool & Silk Rug | All-Over Tabriz Floral | Brand New

This is a large, formal, hand-knotted piece measuring 9'9" x 13'9", woven with a wool and silk pile on a cotton foundation and never put on a floor. The drawing follows the classic Tabriz workshop formula, an all-over floral field rather than a single central medallion, and the silk is used exactly where it earns its keep: on the petal tips, the leaf edges and the fine reciprocal line of the guard stripes, so the pattern shifts in brightness as you walk past it. A rug this size belongs in the group of 10 x 14 area rugs that anchor a full seating arrangement or a 10 seat dining table with every chair still on the pile. Every rug we ship carries a certificate of authenticity confirming that it is hand-knotted, along with its size, materials and origin.

Design and Motifs

The field is laid out as a balanced all-over composition rather than a medallion plan. A column of 4 large crowned palmettes runs up the center axis, each one built from curling acanthus leaves that open around a small inner bouquet, and they are flanked by 8 round rosette cartouches set in pairs down the long sides, several of them filled with a burgundy ground so they read almost as separate little roundels. Thin brown vine tendrils link everything together, carrying detached sprays, tulips, serrated saz leaves and clustered garden blossoms into the open black ground. At the top and bottom of the field sits a small vase motif with two flowering stems rising from it, a quiet signal of which end is which. The main border is an ivory ground carrying alternating tulip fans and paired palmettes, framed inside and out by burgundy vine stripes and a narrow sage minor guard, and the reciprocal outer edge finishes the whole layout cleanly at the black selvage.

Black Ground, Ivory Frame and the Colors In Between

The field is a true deep black, dense and even, reading faintly charcoal where the light catches the pile at an angle. Against it the palmettes are worked in cream, warm gold and buttery ecru with sage and olive green leafwork, and burgundy is used as the accent that keeps the design from going soft: it fills the round cartouches, edges the acanthus curls and runs as a stripe through both sides of the main border. Look closely at the smaller blossoms and you find pale pink, dusty rose, ash grey, ivory white and a touch of lilac, which is what stops the floral work from flattening into one cream tone. The border is a clean unbleached ivory, slightly warmer than the flower highlights, so the black field appears framed rather than simply cut off. Black grounds are the most demanding to dye evenly across 13'9", and this one holds its tone corner to corner with no streaking in the field.

Weaving and Origin

This rug was made in China, in the workshops that took up the classical Tabriz drawing vocabulary and weave it to their own high standard. That makes it an Oriental rug rather than a Persian one, and we say so plainly, because the value here is in the execution. The knotting is tight and regular, the curved vine lines stay smooth through their full arc, and the palmettes are symmetrical across the center axis, all of which require a fine weave and an experienced hand at the loom. Silk is knotted in as highlight only, against a wool pile that gives the rug body and wear resistance underfoot, and the cotton warp and weft keep a piece of this width lying flat and dimensionally stable. Close-up photographs of the corner and the woven back show the knot definition and the crisp ivory cotton fringe, and the rug remains in perfect, never used condition.