Extra Large Rugs (10×14+ to Oversized)
Over about 10 by 14 feet, which the trade calls palace or mansion size. These rugs exist because certain rooms do, and because a handful of workshops kept looms wide enough to weave them. Nothing tribal appears at this scale. Everything here was commissioned, planned on paper and woven by a team, and the practical questions about moving it are as serious as the questions about the rug itself.
Why the loom decides
Width on a vertical loom is fixed before a single knot is tied: it is the length of the beams and the width of the frame. Length can be added by rolling the finished rug onto the lower beam, so a long rug is a matter of patience, but a wide rug requires a wide loom and a bench with several weavers on it working across the same row. That is a workshop, with a designer, a graphed drawing and a master calling the colours. It is why the oversize trade belongs to Tabriz, Kashan, Kerman, the Khorasan centres behind Kashmar weaving, and to the large-format Ziegler production made for European rooms. It is also why there is no oversize Qashqai and never was: a tribal loom is portable, and a portable loom is small.
The price does not improve with size
Buyers expect a discount per square foot at the top of the range and find the opposite. A 12 by 18 needs a rare loom, several trained weavers working in step for years, and a single consistent dye lot across the whole field. Fewer people can make one, fewer buyers want one, and the risk to the workshop if it goes wrong is enormous. An error of half an inch in the drawing repeats across the field and cannot be corrected, which is why the fine end of this band is thin and why Isfahan workshops rarely go there at all.
Moving it, which is the real problem
An oversize wool rug weighs well over 100 pounds and often twice that. It arrives rolled on a core, it is longer than most hallways, and it cannot be folded without setting a crease that may never come out. Before buying, measure the door, the turn at the top of the stairs and the diagonal of the lift. Then plan to empty the room completely: a rug this size is laid once.
Before committing
A rug at this scale cannot be tried at home and sent back in a weekend, so it is worth seeing the piece itself rather than a photograph, in daylight, laid flat. For a room that is large but not exceptional, 8x10 to 10x14 covers more ground than people expect, and a long narrow space is better served by two rectangular rugs in line. Good wool matters more here than knot count, for the same reason it does at 9 by 12. The full ladder is at rugs by size.
