8'6" x 11'6" Wool & Silk Oriental Rug | Tabriz Design | Black Field, Never Used

This 8'6" x 11'6" rug is a finely drawn Oriental rug worked in the classic Tabriz manner: a black ground packed with floral vinework, a round rosette medallion at the center, and a wide ivory border that frames the whole field. The pile is wool with silk used through the highlights, which is why the flower heads and the medallion tracery catch the light while the black ground stays matte and deep. It has never been on a floor, the pile is full height, and the fringe is clean and untrimmed. It ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming it is 100% hand-knotted.

Design and Motifs

The drawing is a full curvilinear Tabriz layout rather than a simplified copy. A circular medallion holds an 8 petal rosette inside a cream cartouche ring, surrounded by 8 burgundy cloud lobes and a halo of cream palmettes. From there the field runs outward in a continuous system of thin scrolling vines, split leaves and small rosettes that never repeats twice in the same spot, finishing in shaped pendants top and bottom. The corner spandrels are camel and taupe with their own palmette and vine fill, which lifts the four corners away from the black. Border construction is a 5 band system: a wide ivory main border of alternating lotus palmettes and carnation sprays on a leafy vine, flanked by burgundy guard stripes and narrow floral minor bands, with a dark outer stripe and selvage closing the edge. That much detail in a 9x12 only works when the knot count supports it, and the back photo shows a tight, even weave with crisp motif edges.

A Black Ground With Ivory, Burgundy and Muted Green

Black is the anchor here and it is a true black, not a very dark navy, which makes this an unusual and dramatic choice in a formal floral. Against it the palette is deliberately soft: blush pink and salmon flower heads, cream and ivory outlines, antique gold and camel in the spandrels, and deep burgundy in the medallion lobes, the guard stripes and the scattered field cartouches. Muted olive green runs through the leaves and vine stems, appearing again in the small buds of the main border. The ivory main border reads almost parchment in daylight and cream under lamps, so the rug sets a bright frame around a dark center and gives the eye somewhere to rest. The silk highlights shift tone as you walk around it, most visibly across the medallion and the larger palmettes.

Weaving Quality and Origin

This piece was hand-knotted in China on a cotton foundation, in a workshop weaving the Tabriz cartoon to a genuinely fine standard. Chinese ateliers have spent decades building this category and the better ones now produce curvilinear floral work with the knot density, the wool and silk blend and the clean line quality that the design demands. Nothing about it is machine made: the knots are tied by hand row by row, the selvages are wrapped by hand and the fringe is the extension of the warps, as image 6 shows. At 8'6" x 11'6" it sits in the most useful large room format, and buyers comparing options at this footprint can browse more 9x12 rugs or the wider selection of wool and silk rugs to see how this one compares on drawing and finish.