9' x 13'6" Persian Tabriz Rug | Takht-e Jamshid Persepolis Pictorial | 70 Raj Wool & Silk on Silk, Never Used

Very few pictorial pieces of this size survive unused, and this 9' x 13'6" Tabriz is one of them. It was knotted in the 1980s at 70 Raj with a wool and silk pile worked over a silk foundation, and the subject is Takht-e Jamshid, the ruined palace city of Persepolis, rendered as a single composition across field and border. The pile still stands at full height, the ivory ground has no traffic shading, and the silk passages catch light exactly as they did on the loom. At 13'6" long it covers a full seating group or a 10 seat dining table, yet the drawing rewards inspection from a foot away. Every rug leaves us with a certificate of authenticity recording origin, materials, knot count and age.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a lobed medallion framing a woven landscape of the Persepolis ruins: fluted columns, fallen capitals, doorways and stairways drawn in graded blues against a pale sky. Around it the ivory field runs as a dense pictorial garden, with large scrolling leaves, palmettes, peacocks and phoenix birds, leaping deer, giraffes, and rows of small footed vases and ewers scattered like finds from a dig. The inner guard is an unbroken frieze of the palace terrace wall. Beyond it sit rectangular panels alternating in a picture-gallery rhythm: the stepped tomb of Cyrus at Pasargadae, lion and bull combat scenes, standing guards with lotus flowers, paired winged lions flanking a chandelier, green columns, and the Faravahar with outspread wings. A black ground border of walking lions, 1 after another, anchors the whole thing, and the outermost stripe returns to winged griffins on ivory.

A Palette of Pastel Ivory, Sky Blue and Lavender

The ground is a warm ivory that reads closer to cream where the silk highlights sit. Over it the weaver used an unusually quiet palette: dusty lavender and mauve for the great leaves and for the figures in the procession panels, sage and olive green for the vine work and the column shafts, soft rose and peach for the rosettes and the medallion outline, and a whole range of pale blues, from a chalky sky blue in the terrace panels to a deeper slate in the ruins themselves. Touches of gold and pale yellow light the fire altar at the foot of the field. The single strong contrast is the black lion border, which stops the pastels from drifting and gives the rug a firm edge against a light floor. It is a rug that will lighten a dark room rather than weigh it down.

Tabriz Weaving at 70 Raj

Tabriz, in northwest Persia, measures fineness in Raj, the number of knots across a gereh of about 2.75 inches. 40 Raj is commercial work and 50 is already fine; 70 Raj is the ceiling that only the best workshops attempt, and it is only possible over a silk foundation, where thin warps let the weaver place knots tightly enough to draw a human face or a broken column in correct proportion. That is exactly what is happening in the panels here, where each guard has a recognizable beard, robe and staff. Detail of this order also explains the time involved: a pictorial piece of this scale at this count is years of loom work, not months. Collectors looking at other fine Persian Tabriz rugs will recognize how rarely the historical Persepolis cartoon appears in an unused 9 by 14 format.