10'6" x 18' Persian Sarouk Rug | Antique Salmon All-Over Floral | Oversize Palace Size

This is a genuine palace-scale antique, 10'6" x 18' of hand-knotted wool on a cotton foundation, woven in central Persia in the classic Sarouk manner. The field is a deep salmon rose, filled corner to corner with detached floral sprays, and the whole composition is framed by a dark indigo main border that gives the rug its weight and authority on a big floor. Decades of careful use have left the 3/8" pile even and silky, with the soft surface sheen that only old wool and long wear produce. Rugs of this length rarely survive intact, which is what makes it interesting to collectors as well as to anyone furnishing a long living room or a formal dining space; among oversize Persian rugs the 18 foot length is the hard one to find. If you want the background on the type before you buy, our guide to Persian Sarouk rugs covers the weave and the market. A certificate of authenticity ships with the rug.

Design and Motifs

There is no central medallion here. The drawing is the pure all-over Sarouk formula: separate floral sprays, curled serrated leaves, small vases and stacked palmettes set loose across the open field, each one detached from its neighbor so the salmon ground stays visible between them. The repeat is mirrored along the long axis, which is what keeps a field this long from looking random, and the weavers stretched the pattern rather than cramming extra rows in, so the rug reads calm rather than busy from standing height. The main border carries a procession of upright flowering plants and rosettes on dark indigo, flanked by narrow ivory and rose guard stripes with a running vine. Look at the corners in the detail photograph and you will see the drawing resolve cleanly at all 4 turns, a sign the cartoon was properly worked out before a single knot was tied.

A Salmon Field Framed in Mid Blue and Ivory

The field color is the signature Sarouk salmon, a warm rose red that has softened with age into something closer to coral in the open areas and deeper raspberry where the pile lies against the light. Against it, the floral sprays are drawn in near-black indigo and mid blue, with cooler sky blue and muted green touches inside the leaves and flower heads that only show themselves up close. Ivory does the quiet work: it outlines the guard stripes, picks out small blossoms in the border and lifts the whole palette so the dark border does not swallow the field. Camel and old gold appear in the border plants, adding warmth at the edges. Under lamplight the rug reads rich and rosy; in daylight the blues come forward and the salmon cools toward pink, which is exactly the color shift collectors look for in an old wool Sarouk.

Sarouk Weaving in Central Persia

Sarouk is a village near Arak in central Persia, and from the late 19th century onward its looms and those of the surrounding district produced some of the most durable floral rugs ever exported. The recipe was simple and hard to copy: dense wool on a tight cotton foundation, a heavy beat-down, and local fleece with enough lanolin to take dye deeply and hold a sheen for a century. The reverse of this rug, shown with a ruler for scale, tells the story better than any number does: a fine, regular, tightly packed knot line with no slack and no bulges, the mark of experienced hands working a long loom over many months. A 10'6" x 18' piece required a purpose-built loom and a team working in sequence, and that investment is why old Sarouks of this scale still lie flat, still wear evenly and still turn up as the oldest thing in the room.