10'1" x 14' Persian Heriz Rug | Burgundy Field with Stepped Ivory Medallion | Excellent Condition

This is a full room size Persian Heriz, hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation and measuring 10'1" x 14'. The drawing is pure village Heriz: a broad stepped medallion anchored dead center, heavy ivory and olive green outlines that read from across the room, and deep burgundy filling the field around it. The pile still has body and the wool has that dry, glassy sheen the Heriz district is known for, which is why a rug of this age and weight comes to us in excellent condition rather than worn thin. It ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming the origin, the materials and the hand-knotted construction. Among 10 x 14 Persian rugs this is the size that actually covers a large living room or a long dining table with the chairs pulled out.

Design and Motifs

Everything here is drawn on the diagonal and the straight line, which is what separates Heriz from the curvilinear city workshops. The center medallion is a broad diamond with stepped, hooked edges, outlined first in olive brown and then in a bold ivory line that jumps forward against the red. Inside it sits a smaller cross shaped rosette with an 8 ray star in a lilac octagon at the exact center, flanked by hooked palmettes and small blue and ivory buds. Long anchor pendants run off the top and bottom points of the medallion into the field. The 4 corner spandrels are worked in ivory and packed with serrated leaves, zigzag vine and small stepped blossoms, which is the single most recognizable Heriz signature. The main border carries a chain of hexagonal rosettes and angular vine on a navy-black ground, framed by narrow guard stripes of reciprocal barbs. The field between the medallion and the corners is filled with small hooked leaves, latch hook brackets and stray blossoms, never left empty, in the crowded confident manner of the best geometric rugs from northwest Persia.

The Burgundy, Navy-Black, Ivory and Olive Green Palette

The field is a deep madder burgundy that is not flat: it shifts from a darker wine tone at the outer edges to a brighter cherry red across the medallion, the natural abrash of hand-dyed wool taken from different dye lots. Against that ground the navy-black of the main border reads almost black from a distance and resolves into dark indigo up close, the same color used to outline the spandrels and to fill the small interior panels. Ivory does all the heavy lifting for contrast, first as the thick outline that traces the medallion and then as the ground of the 4 corners, where it is the brightest thing in the rug. Olive green appears as a secondary outline around the medallion and in the small leaf forms of the border, warming the red where a pure green would fight it. Scattered through the field are small accents of soft lilac, teal, sky blue, camel and rose, each one only a few knots wide, which is what gives the burgundy its depth rather than letting it go heavy.

Heriz Weaving East of Tabriz

Heriz is a cluster of villages east of Tabriz, on the slopes below Mount Sabalan, where the mineral-rich water is credited with producing wool that is unusually tough and high in lanolin. Weavers there work from memory and from small drawings rather than a full cartoon, which is why the two halves of a Heriz are never quite identical and why the line stays angular. The back photograph shows the structure plainly: a firm cotton warp and weft, a substantial knot, and clean color separation with no visible repair. This is a village weave rather than a fine city one, and that is the point, because the heavier knot and the thick lanolin-rich pile are exactly what let a Heriz of this size take decades of traffic and still lie flat with the pile standing.