10'7" x 16'4" Antique Persian Sarough Rug | Fire Red All Over Floral Field | Navy Border

An antique Sarouk this large, and this sound, does not turn up often. At 10'7" x 16'4" it belongs with the true oversize Persian rugs, long enough to run a full dining table with the chairs pulled clear, wide enough to carry a great room from one seating group to the other. The field is a saturated fire red orange packed from selvage to selvage with detached floral sprays, and the wide navy border repeats that drawing in reverse so the rug reads as one continuous garden rather than a field with a frame. The wool has the dense, faintly glossy handle that makes this type so collectible, the 3/8" pile stands evenly with no thin areas, and the ends and sides are intact with their original ivory fringe. If you want the deeper background on the type, read our guide to Persian Sarough rugs. The rug ships with a certificate of authenticity recording its size, materials, origin and condition.

Design and Motifs

There is no medallion here. This is the classic all over floral design that made the Sarouk name, built from detached sprays that float free on the open red ground: bent stems carrying serrated leaves, single blossoms, small 8 petal rosettes and tall dark cypress forms that punctuate the rhythm every few rows. Larger fan shaped palmettes and curled vine scrolls sit at the center of each spray, drawn with the soft curved line of a workshop cartoon rather than the angular village shorthand. The sprays alternate direction row by row, so the pattern never locks into an obvious grid, and the 4 corners are resolved cleanly rather than cut off. The main border on navy ground carries its own procession of palmettes, rosettes and hooked leaves, set off by an ivory guard stripe running a simple meander of small blossoms and dots, then a narrow reciprocal outer stripe that finishes the edge. The close-up corner photo shows how carefully those border elements were spaced, with each flower head fully drawn rather than compressed to fit.

The Fire Red Orange and Navy Palette

The field is the reason to buy this rug. It is a fire red orange, closer to tomato and hot brick than to burgundy, and it shifts gently through the length of the rug into softer terracotta and salmon tones where the wool takes the light differently. Against that ground the navy blue of the border is so deep it reads almost black at the corners, and it is that contrast, hot red against cold navy, that gives the piece its presence on a floor. Ivory does the connecting work: it outlines the guard stripes, picks out individual petals and leaf tips in the field, and keeps the dense drawing legible instead of muddy. Inside the sprays and border palmettes you will find mid and powder blue, a dusty olive green, camel and soft rose, along with charcoal outlines that hold each motif in shape. The ivory fringe at both ends is original and still bright. On a pale oak, limestone or dark walnut floor this palette holds its own, and it pairs comfortably with cream upholstery, brass and aged leather.

Sarough Origin and Weaving Quality

Sarouk is a village near Arak in west central Persia, at the heart of the old Sultanabad weaving district, and its looms have long been known for two things: a heavy, hard wearing wool and a curvilinear floral drawing taken from workshop designs rather than tribal memory. Weavers there worked the floral spray pattern in oversize formats for decades, which is why a piece of this scale exists at all, since very few villages could set up and keep a loom over 16 feet long. The back photograph tells the rest of the story: a firm, even cotton foundation, tightly packed wefts, and knot rows that stay regular across the full 127 inch width, which is what keeps a rug this heavy lying flat instead of buckling. That density is also why antique Sarouks survive generations of real use, and the pile depth still measuring 3/8" here says this one was cared for. If you want to understand what to look at when judging age on a piece like this, see how to date an oriental rug.