5x7 Persian Tabriz Rug | 60 Raj Wool and Silk on Silk | Ivory Field, Dusty Rose Medallion and Border
This is a 60 Raj Tabriz, which puts it in the top grade the city's workshops produce for the open market: about 480 to 500 knots per square inch, knotted in wool with silk highlights on a silk foundation. At that density the weaver can draw a vine no wider than a single knot and give a palmette a dozen shades, and this 5x7 shows what that buys, an ivory field covered in flowing Shah Abbas palmettes and arabesque vines around a scalloped dusty rose medallion, all framed by a rose border of the same flowers. The pile is full and even, the silk highlights catch the light in the close-up photographs, the ivory silk fringes are intact, and the rug has never been on a floor. A certificate of authenticity from Rugs.net accompanies the rug.
Design and Motifs
The medallion is built in 4 layers. At the very center a small ivory rosette sits on a black ground shaped like a 4-pointed star with curling arms; around that a blush pink lobed frame with sky blue scalloped edges holds sprays of mauve blossoms in each of its 4 corners; and the whole is set in a large dusty rose medallion whose 8 pointed lobes carry ivory palmettes and tulip forms at the tips. The field around it is ivory, and it is not empty: brown arabesque vines with sage and olive leaves loop across the whole ground, carrying large Shah Abbas palmettes in mauve, rose and gray, smaller lotus flowers, and clusters of tiny pink blossoms, with the drawing mirrored across both axes. Each corner of the field has a rose spandrel with an ivory arabesque and a black rosette at its heart, set inside a pale gray inner frame that steps around the corner. The main border is the rose of the medallion, carrying a row of large ivory and mauve palmettes and lotus flowers on a continuous vine, with sprays of tiny white and blue blossoms filling the spaces, and it is guarded on both sides by a blush pink band with a delicate ivory vine. A thin brown outer stripe closes the design.
Colors of This Ivory and Rose Tabriz Rug
The field is a warm ivory, closer to cream than to white, and because the vines on it are drawn in brown and gray rather than a strong color, the ivory stays the dominant note across the whole rug. The medallion, the corner spandrels and the main border are all the same dusty rose, a muted pink with a little terracotta in it, which reads softer in the room than in the flat photographs, where the camera tips it toward brick. The blush pink of the medallion frame and the border guards is a full step lighter, almost a shell pink, and the pale gray of the inner corner frame is cooler still. Inside those grounds the palmettes and flowers run through mauve, a grayed lavender, a dusty blue, sage and olive green, a small amount of clear sky blue in the medallion edges, and a gold that appears in a few knots at the center of some flowers. Black is used only for the medallion core and the rosettes in the spandrels, and it gives the design its anchor. The silk highlights, visible in the rolled close-up, sit mostly in the ivory outlines and the pale flowers, so they brighten the drawing without changing the palette. The back shows the same colors slightly lighter with no bleeding.
Tabriz Weaving at 60 Raj
Tabriz in northwest Persia grades its rugs by Raj, the count of knots across a 7 cm span of the width. 40 Raj is commercial work, 50 Raj is fine, and 60 Raj is where the collector grade begins, roughly 400 knots per square inch on paper and closer to 500 on a piece like this one where the weaver has beaten the wefts down tight. A silk foundation is what makes that density possible: silk warps are thinner and stronger than cotton, so more knots fit in the same inch and the rug stays thin and supple instead of stiff. Tabriz workshops reserve wool and silk on silk for their best drawing, the curvilinear Shah Abbas and medallion designs the city has woven since the Safavid court moved there in the 16th century. Among 5x7 Persian rugs a 60 Raj Tabriz in this palette is a bedroom, entry or study rug that will also hang on a wall, and it is fine enough to be bought as a collector's piece rather than a floor covering.
