Ivory and Chestnut 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 93cm — herati field, lobed medallion, pendants, spandrels and a multi-band border — depends on a very high knot count.

Be realistic about this one: it is pale from edge to edge. The same ivory is the field ground and the border ground, so there is no darker area anywhere to absorb a mark, and the darkest wool on the rug is a mahogany brown rather than a black. The compensation is that the drawing is dense and evenly spread, so ordinary soiling has pattern to disappear into wherever it lands. It suits a wall or a low-traffic spot rather than a doorway.

Three separate measurements say the border of this rug is made of the same fabric as the field. The ivory ground inside and the ivory ground outside are 2.41 apart in Lab — under three, which this catalogue counts as an excellent match, so they are one wool rather than two. The brightness range is the same in both: the field runs 196 points from its darkest to its lightest, the borders 202. And the density of drawing is the same, a local-contrast reading of 0.377 in the field against 0.352 in the borders, a ratio of 1.07.

Same ground, same tonal range, same amount of drawing per square centimetre. What separates field from border is only the motif — diamonds inside, palmettes and flowering vine outside — and a pair of dark guard stripes a few millimetres wide marking the join. There is no tonal step at the boundary at all. On a rug this small that matters more than it would on a large one: with nothing to stop the eye at the frame, the surface reads as continuous and the piece looks appreciably bigger than 62 by 93cm. It is the opposite of what a dark border does, which is to close a small rug down and make it read as a tile.