10'2" x 13'5" Persian Heriz Rug | Geometric Medallion | Rustic Red Village Weave

This is a full room-size Heriz from the villages of northwest Persia, hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation and measuring 10'2" x 13'5". The pile is even and full from end to end, the selvages are intact, and the 4 corners lie flat, which is what you want to see before a rug of this format goes under a dining table or a large sectional. The drawing is pure Heriz: one big stepped medallion holding the center, ivory spandrels opening the 4 corners, and a wide black-ground border carrying the eye all the way around. It sits squarely in the most useful of all room dimensions, and if you are shopping the format rather than the village, our 10x13 Persian rugs page shows what else is in stock. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The center medallion is built from interlocking ivory latch hooks around a small stepped octagon, with a dark navy core and a rosette at the very middle. Above and below it run long pendants that end in pink and ivory palmettes, pulling the composition the length of the rug. The field around the medallion is filled with angular palmettes, serrated leaves, hooked vines and small blossoms, all drawn in straight lines and diagonals rather than curves, which is the hallmark of Heriz work and of geometric Persian rugs generally. The 4 corner spandrels are ivory, each packed with its own miniature garden of leaves and rosettes, and framed by a dark outline that makes them read cleanly from across the room. The main border alternates large rosettes and cypress-like motifs on a near-black ground, flanked by narrow blue guard stripes with a running vine. Nothing here is mechanical; motifs shift slightly in scale and color from one repeat to the next, the signature of weavers working from memory rather than from a full cartoon.

A Palette of Rustic Red, Indigo and Ivory

The field is an antique rustic red, warm and slightly brick-toned rather than bright, with soft variation through the ground where the wool took the dye at different rates. Against it, ivory does the structural work: the medallion outline, the corner spandrels and the scattered blossoms all read as cream and off-white, so the layout stays legible even in a dim room. Indigo and medium blue appear in the leaves, the guard stripes and the small octagon at the center of the medallion, cooling the red where it might otherwise run hot. Black grounds the main border and the sub-medallions above and below the center, giving the whole rug a strong outer frame. Olive and a muted khaki green turn up in the larger leaves and in parts of the border, with occasional soft pink and salmon in the pendant palmettes. Under lamplight the wool carries a distinct sheen, and the red shifts between rust and deep garnet depending on the direction you walk around it.

Heriz: The Villages East of Tabriz

Heriz is a cluster of weaving villages east of Tabriz, on the slopes below Mount Sabalan. The water there is mineral-rich, and local lore credits it with the toughness of the wool, which is famously dense, springy and high in lanolin. That wool is why Heriz rugs have a reputation as the workhorses of the Persian tradition: they are woven at a moderate knot count, usually well under 200 knots per square inch, but with a heavy handle and thick yarn that shrugs off decades of foot traffic. The angular drawing is a direct consequence of the weave, since a village loom at this gauge renders straight lines and stepped corners far better than flowing curves. Look at the back of this piece and you can see the knots sitting in clean, regular rows with the cotton warps clearly visible, the mark of experienced hands keeping tension steady across more than 10 feet of width.