9'9" x 13' Persian Tabriz Rug | Ivory Field, Rose Red Medallion | 60 Raj Wool and Silk, Never Used

This is a workshop Tabriz from the 2000s that has never been put down on a floor, and it shows in the pile: the wool still stands up straight, the silk highlights still catch the light exactly as they did on the loom, and the ivory ground has none of the softening that even a few years of foot traffic brings. At 9'9" x 13' it sits in the most useful large format there is, wide enough to float a full seating group or to carry a 10 seat dining table with the chairs pulled back, and it belongs in the same conversation as the best 10x13 Persian rugs we import. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity recording the origin, the materials and the hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The centre is a lobed star medallion, built in concentric rings around a single small rosette and radiating outward through layers of palmettes, curling leaves and hooked arabesques before it breaks into a scalloped rose red outline. Pendants run off the top and bottom of the medallion into the open field, and 4 corner spandrels answer it with the same drawing in reverse. What fills the rest of the field is the harder part of the job: a continuous all-over vine scroll of thin stems, split palmettes and small flowerheads that mirrors perfectly across the long axis and never collides with itself. The main border carries a stately palmette and flower procession on rose red, framed on both sides by ivory guard stripes of running vine, and the close-up of the corner shows the drawing resolving cleanly rather than being cut short, which is the usual tell of a careful cartoon and a disciplined weaver.

Ivory Ground, Rose Red Borders and the Supporting Palette

The field is a warm ivory, closer to cream than to white, which keeps the rug from reading cold in a room with pale walls. Against it the medallion and the main border share a rose red, a raspberry tone with a dusty softness rather than the hot fire red of a Kashan, and that single choice sets the whole temperature of the piece. Inside the medallion the palette opens up: a deep navy core, soft sage and teal greens, tan and olive gold, cinnamon brown and small touches of pale pink in the flowerheads. The same navy reappears as dark accents scattered through the field so the eye is pulled evenly across all 13 feet instead of resting only in the middle. Green shows up mostly as leafwork in the borders, and where the silk sits in the highlights the color shifts by a shade or two as you walk around the rug.

Tabriz Weaving and the 60 Raj Standard

Tabriz measures fineness in Raj, the number of knots counted across a gereh of roughly 2.75 inches of width. 40 Raj is ordinary commercial goods, 50 Raj is fine, and 60 Raj, which is where this rug sits at approximately 400 knots per square inch, is the grade where a workshop can draw a true curve instead of a stepped approximation of one. That is why the vines here bend smoothly and the medallion outline scallops cleanly. The back photograph shows the result: tight, even rows on a cotton foundation, with the pattern legible from the reverse and no slack or irregular beating. A rug of this size at this knot count represents years on the loom for a team of weavers, and the fact that it was rolled and stored rather than used means the buyer gets the full original pile height.