10'2" x 13'8" Persian Rug | Traditional Floral Medallion | 1980s Hand-Knotted Wool

This is the classic Persian room-size format done properly: a deep cochineal red field, a lobed ivory medallion floating dead center, and a wide indigo border that frames the whole thing like a picture. Woven by hand in the 1980's on a cotton foundation with a full wool pile, it measures 10'2" x 13'8" and covers a large room end to end, which puts it squarely in the most useful range of 10x14 Persian rugs. The pile is even from side to side, the selvedges are intact, the fringes are original and the wool still carries its natural sheen, so the condition reads excellent. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming it is hand-knotted in Persia.

Design and Motifs

The drawing follows the traditional Persian floral medallion formula, and the weaver stayed disciplined with it. At the center sits a lobed ivory medallion filled with a sky blue diamond, small palmettes and tiny rose and green blossoms, finished top and bottom with slender pendants that reach out into the field. The 4 corners carry matching sky blue spandrels drawn with the same vocabulary, so the eye reads a complete framed composition rather than a loose scatter. Between medallion and corners the red ground is filled edge to edge with scrolling vines, curling serrated leaves, 8 petal rosettes, navy palmettes and small cypress-like sprays, all mirrored across both axes. The border system runs 5 bands deep: a wide indigo main border of alternating rosettes and split-leaf arabesques, flanked by ivory guard stripes of linked flower heads and a final narrow outer stripe. Nothing is crowded and nothing is empty, which is the mark of a cartoon drawn by someone who knew the proportions.

A Field of Cochineal Red Against Indigo and Ivory

The field is a true cochineal crimson, slightly cooler and deeper than a brick red, and it shifts gently with the nap so one end of the room reads richer than the other. Against it the border is a saturated indigo navy, dark enough to hold the composition in place, and the spandrels and secondary border are a pale sky blue that lifts the whole piece and keeps the red from turning heavy. Ivory does the detail work: the medallion ground, the guard stripes and the fine outlines around every leaf and vine. Warm salmon, soft rose, old gold and small touches of olive green appear inside the palmettes and rosettes, and the gold vine tracery is what ties the red field to the blue frame. It is a classic combination for buyers searching red and burgundy Persian rugs, and it sits naturally with dark wood, leather and antique brass.

Persian Workshop Weaving and Build Quality

This is town workshop weaving rather than village or tribal work. A piece this wide is woven on a large upright loom by more than one weaver working from a drawn cartoon, which is the only way the medallion lands centered and the borders turn all 4 corners cleanly at 10'2" x 13'8". The back photograph shows an even, tightly packed knot line on a cotton foundation, with the pattern reading almost as sharply from behind as it does from the face, a reliable sign that the wefts were beaten down properly and the tension held over the full length of the weaving. The pile is good highland wool, springy underfoot and still glossy after decades, cut at a medium height that protects the fine outlines while giving the rug enough body to sit flat without curling. Built this way, a 1980's Persian room-size piece has most of its service life ahead of it.