9' x 12' Wool and Silk Oriental Rug | Tabriz Medallion Design | Black Field, Brand New

This is a brand new, never used 9' x 12' hand-knotted rug in wool with silk highlights, drawn in the classic Tabriz medallion format and woven in China. It is one of the more ambitious pieces in this weave group: a jet black field, a layered ivory and burgundy medallion, and enough silk in the flower heads that the whole surface changes brightness as you walk around it. At 108" x 144" it fills a standard 9 x 12 living room footprint with all four furniture legs on the rug and room to spare at the walls. It ships with our certificate of authenticity confirming the hand-knotted construction, the wool and silk pile and the measured dimensions.

Design and Motifs

The layout is the full curvilinear medallion scheme: a round ivory center rosette ringed in burgundy, sitting inside a scalloped, cloud-lobed frame that pushes out into the field on all sides. Above and below the medallion sit matching burgundy pendant palmettes, each one outlined in ivory scrollwork and finished with a spray of leaves. The black ground between them is never empty; it carries a dense net of thin curling vines, split leaves, small rosettes and shaded pink blossoms that keep the drawing alive right out to the 4 corner spandrels. Those spandrels are worked in sage green and ivory with Rococo style scrolling cartouches, a European inflection the Tabriz workshops adopted long ago and one this weaver has copied carefully. The main border is a deep burgundy band of large palmettes and meandering vine, interrupted at intervals by black cartouches holding a single upright flower head, with narrow ivory and sage guard stripes on both sides and a final black outer band along the selvage.

The Black Field, Burgundy Border and Sage Green Accents

Black is the anchor here and it is a true black, not a washed out charcoal, which is exactly why the rest of the palette reads so clearly. Against it the burgundy of the medallion ring, the pendants and the main border comes forward as a deep wine red with a slight plum cast under warm light. The ivory is used in two registers: a clean chalk white in the medallion center and the guard stripes, and a softer cream in the spandrel grounds. Sage green carries the corner panels and the inner guard stripe, a muted gray green that keeps the red and black from feeling heavy. Scattered through all of it are the small details that make the rug: dusty pink and rose flower heads, pale gold and camel vine outlines, and touches of olive and soft blue in the leaves. The silk is placed where it does the most work, in the petals, the scroll outlines and the medallion, so those elements lift off the matte wool ground rather than sitting flush with it.

Made in China in the Tabriz Tradition: Weave and Quality

This rug was hand-knotted in China on a cotton foundation, following the Tabriz medallion cartoon that fine workshops everywhere in the trade use as a benchmark for curved line drawing. A design like this only holds together at a high knot count, because every one of those vine tendrils and shaded petals has to turn a smooth curve rather than a staircase, and the corner detail photos show the outlines staying crisp down to single knot widths. The pile is clipped low and even so the pattern stays legible, the silk highlights are clipped slightly lower still to catch light, and the selvages and the hand-tied cotton fringe are both clean and tight. It is a genuinely well made Oriental rug in perfect, unused condition, and at 9 by 12 it is sized for a formal dining room or a full seating group without the price of a comparable workshop piece from the Middle East.