Brick Red and Sandstone Mahi Medallion Tabriz, Hand-Knotted Wool Rug

100% wool pile, hand-knotted, finished with an ivory fringe at both ends. A full Tabriz composition inside 62 by 90cm — herati field, lobed medallion, pendants, spandrels and a multi-band border — depends on a very high knot count.

The red band through the middle of the field is the forgiving part; the sandstone spandrels and borders are not, and between them they account for a good deal of a small rug. At this size the piece will sit in a doorway, at a bedside or on a wall. It suits a wall particularly well — the drawing is fine enough that it rewards being looked at from close to rather than walked over.

Count the pale wool in rings outward from the centre of the field and it does not fall away as you would expect. Within five centimetres of the middle it runs 36% of the surface; between five and ten it peaks at 44%. Then it drops — to 33%, and at fifteen to twenty centimetres out to just 20%. Past that it climbs again: 29%, 28%, and 36% in the outermost band before the border.

So the pale wool is not spread through the field, and it is not concentrated at the centre either. It sits in two places — the medallion in the middle and the spandrels sweeping in from the corners — with a trough between them. That trough is the red. What reads as a red ground with ornaments placed on it is more accurately a red ring: a band of madder about five centimetres deep, running right round the medallion, holding almost all of the herati and pressed between two pale zones. It is also worth knowing the two pale zones are not the same wool. The medallion measures a warmer, more golden ivory than the sandstone of the spandrels and borders — 8.44 apart in Lab, comfortably enough to tell them apart — so the centre reads as its own thing rather than as the frame reaching in.