10'8" x 14'6" Persian Sarouk Rug | Mohajeran Design, Tomato Red Field | Circa 1940s

Woven in the 1940s at 10'8" x 14'6", this antique piece carries the Mohajeran drawing that separates the best Persian Sarouk rugs from ordinary village work: an open tomato red field left largely bare so the detached floral sprays can breathe, one small indigo cartouche medallion at the center, and a deep blue main border of flowering vases. The wool is the glossy, tightly spun fleece the Arak villages were known for, and 80 years later the drawing is still legible line for line, with black outlines holding every stem and leaf in place. It is a true room size piece for a large living room or a long dining table, and it ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The Mohajeran layout is an all over field of detached sprays rather than a single dominating medallion. Sinuous vines loop out of each corner carrying clusters of small rosettes, and between them sit stiff bouquets of serrated lancet leaves, tulip like blossoms and curled boteh paisleys, several of them drawn with a ribbon of green berries down the spine. Two large open scrollwork cartouches balance the upper and lower halves, and the only true medallion is small, a pointed indigo lozenge no wider than 2 feet holding a scrolling arabesque and a few red blossoms. The main border runs a repeating file of blue ground vases sprouting red pomegranate buds and green foliage, framed on both sides by camel gold guard stripes of linked rosettes and a narrow reciprocal minor stripe in wine red. Corner resolution is honest village drawing: the vase repeat turns the corner cleanly on all 4 sides, which is not something you see on hurried work of this period.

The Tomato Red, Indigo and Old Gold Palette

The field is a warm tomato red, closer to a ripe brick than to a cool burgundy, and it moves across the width in gentle bands of abrash where the dye lots changed on the loom. Against it the drawing is almost entirely cool: indigo and midnight blue leaves outlined in black, sage and olive green on the smaller stems, and highlights in ivory, soft apricot and salmon that catch the light in the pile shots. The main border reverses the scheme, putting the same flowers on a deep denim blue ground, while the twin guard stripes are old gold verging on camel, a color that has mellowed rather than faded and now reads as antique brass beside the red. The back photograph confirms the dyes are stable, with the same tomato, indigo and gold reading clearly through the cotton foundation. In a room with dark hardwood, cream walls and brass lamps, as in the styled photograph, the red warms the whole floor without going orange.

Mohajeran Sarouk Weaving in the Arak District

Sarouk is a village north of Arak in central Persia, and Mohajeran, a neighboring settlement in the same district, produced the finest grade of the group: heavier wool, denser knotting and drawing far more disciplined than the export Sarouks of the same decades. Weavers there worked on cotton warps with a thick, springy wool pile, which is why a piece this old still lies flat and heavy without a pad and still has years of service in it. The scale is generous even by district standards, and buyers shopping 10x14 Persian rugs will find few genuine antiques of this age at this width. The 1940s dating comes from the palette, the cotton foundation and the border repeat, the same evidence used to date an antique Oriental rug when no signature is woven in, and this one carries no cartouche at either end.