19'6"x29'6" Persian Tabriz Rug | 70 Raj Wool and Silk on Silk | Signed Twice | 1970s | Approx. 700 KPSI

This is the top of what Tabriz weaving can do, and there is no other way to put it. 19'6" x 29'6", roughly 575 square feet of rug, woven in the 1970s at 70 Raj on a silk foundation with wool and silk pile at around 700 knots per square inch. Understand what that means in practice. A 70 Raj rug is collector work at 4x6. At this size it runs to hundreds of millions of knots, every one tied by hand, on a loom that had to be built specially to hold it. Rugs like this take years and a team of weavers who cannot afford a single error, because at 70 Raj a drift of 2 knots shows up as a bent line 10 feet away. It is signed twice, at both ends, by the weaver and the designer. Condition is excellent. If you are working at this scale the rest of our oversize Persian rugs are worth seeing, though very little in the world compares to this one. A certificate of authenticity comes with it.

Design and Motifs

At the center is a lobed ivory and sage medallion built on an 8 petal rosette, its core a tight burgundy and teal starburst no bigger than a dinner plate on a rug this size, ringed by cream petals each carrying its own miniature bouquet. Pendant finials reach out above and below into the rose field, and the medallion sits inside a wide cream cartouche outlined in gold and mauve arabesque. From there the field opens into a full all-over composition, not a plain ground with scattered motifs. Curling arabesque vines in gold and cream run corner to corner, and hung off them are lotus palmettes, fan shaped blossoms, lilies, tulips, cypress sprays and small 5 petal flowerheads, every one drawn in enough colors to shade like a painting. The 4 corner spandrels are mauve and dusty plum with their own scrolling vinework, set off from the field by a curved cream outline rather than a hard angle, which is a Tabriz signature and much harder to draw cleanly than a straight corner. Around all of it runs a multi band border system: a broad ivory main band of alternating palmettes and floral sprays, then salmon and cream guard stripes carrying garlands of small blossoms, then the outer rose band where the two signature cartouches sit. The symmetry holds perfectly end to end, which on a rug this long is the whole achievement.

Colors in Detail

The field is rose, a soft dusty pink with a warm salmon undertone rather than a cold one, and across that expanse it holds absolutely even. The main border is a warm ivory, closer to clotted cream than white, and between field and border sit the salmon and peach guard bands that step the eye out gradually instead of stopping it. The corner spandrels drop into a deeper mauve plum, the darkest note in the rug. Everything else is pastel and precise: sage green through the medallion and the leaf work, a soft golden yellow that outlines the arabesque vines and lifts the whole composition, lavender and orchid purple in the fan blossoms, a clear cornflower and teal blue in the small flowerheads, deep burgundy in the flower centers, olive and moss green in the stems, and warm apricot scattered through the border rosettes. Then there is the silk. It is worked into the flowers, the palmette petals, the vine outlines and the medallion, and it does not read as a separate material so much as a change in the light. Walk around this rug and the flowers turn on and off as the silk catches you from one angle and goes matte from another. That is the effect you are paying for, and photographs only hint at it. If you want to understand why the silk matters here, our guide to Persian silk rugs covers it properly.

Origin and Weaving

The two cartouches read "Marand, Baft Ebrahim Bahar Manesh, Tarhe Afkari", which names the town, the weaver and the designer: made in Marand, woven by Ebrahim Bahar Manesh, design by Afkari. Marand sits about 40 miles northwest of Tabriz on the road toward the Turkish border, and its workshops weave in the Tabriz tradition, to Tabriz standards, using the Tabriz Raj system. Raj counts the knots across one gereh, about 2.75 inches of width. 40 Raj is good commercial work. 50 is fine. 60 is collector grade. 70, where this rug sits, is the ceiling of what the best workshops in the region attempt, and they do not attempt it often, because the finer the knot the slower the loom and the less margin for error. Scaling that to 19'6" x 29'6" is a different order of problem again. The silk foundation is what makes it possible, since silk warps can be strung finer and held under higher tension than cotton without stretching, and that tension is what keeps a rug this long straight through years on the loom. It lies flat, hangs true, and shows the same crisp drawing on the back as the front. A weaver putting his own name on a piece this size is telling you he expects it to outlast him. 50 years on, condition is excellent throughout, full pile, straight sides, clean fringe, and both signature panels intact.