10'2" x 13'9" Persian Sarough Rug | Red Field with Ivory Lobed Medallion | Fine Wool Pile

This 10'2" x 13'9" room size rug is a textbook Persian Sarough rug: a cotton warp, a short 3/8" wool clip packed down hard, and a drawing that covers the whole field without ever looking crowded. A clear red ground carries an ivory and blue lobed medallion at center, ivory floral spandrels at the 4 corners, and a wide near-black navy border of palmettes and curling vine. The handle is heavy and flat, the kind of weave that takes a dining table and chairs without flattening, and the pile still stands upright across the field and into the corners. It ships with a certificate of authenticity identifying it as a hand-knotted Persian Sarough in wool.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a stepped ivory medallion with a mid blue core and an 8 petal rosette at the very middle, framed by tight ivory arabesques that turn back on themselves like ironwork. Out from the medallion the field runs as a continuous system of split palmettes, serrated leaves, small rosettes and thin vine, drawn symmetrically about both axes so the two halves of the rug mirror each other. The 4 corner spandrels repeat the medallion vocabulary in ivory, giving the red field a clean oval shape. The main border is a navy ground with large palmettes and leafy vine, pinned on each side by narrow guard stripes: a straw-ivory stripe of small square florets, a mid blue stripe of rosette pairs, and a fine sawtooth minor stripe visible in the corner photo, all enclosed by a plain red outer band. It is one of the genuinely usable formats among 10x14 Persian rugs, with enough field left open under furniture for the medallion to read.

Color: Clear Red, Ivory and Deep Navy

The field is a bright, slightly orange-leaning tomato red that warms toward brick where the light rakes across the pile, with gentle abrash shifting the tone in broad bands rather than patches. Against it the ivory reads in two values, a cool chalk white in the medallion and spandrel outlines and a softer straw cream in the vine and guard stripe, which keeps the drawing from looking printed. The main border is an indigo so deep it goes nearly black in the shadows, and inside it the blues separate into a clear mid blue in the medallion core and a lighter sky blue in the minor stripe and border rosettes. Scattered through the flowers are small notes of salmon, peach, pale sage green and a dark charcoal used for outlining, all in small quantities, which is why the overall effect stays firmly in the family of red Persian rugs rather than multicolor. The ivory cotton fringe and the red plain outer band finish the edges cleanly.

Sarough Weaving and the Arak District

Sarough is a village in the Arak district of central Persia, in the same weaving belt that produced Mahal and Ferahan work, and its reputation was never built on the highest knot counts. It was built on density and wool quality. Sarough weavers use a thick cotton warp, beat the wefts down hard, and clip the pile short, so the finished rug is stiff, heavy for its size and famously hard to wear out. That is exactly what you feel here: fold the corner back and the foundation is tight and even, with the knot rows running straight across the width, and the back shows the clean definition of a well executed village workshop piece rather than a loose commercial weave. The medallion and all-over vine formula on a red ground is the classic Sarough statement, and at this size it was woven as a formal room rug from the start.