10'9" x 13'7" Persian Bakhtiar Rug | Tribal Floral Medallion | 1970s Brick Burgundy & Ivory

This is a full room size Bakhtiar from the 1970s, 10'9" x 13'7" of hand-knotted wool on a cotton foundation, carrying a big ivory star medallion over a brick burgundy field. It has been owned and used, and it has come through that use beautifully: the pile still stands at a full 3/8", the selvedges are intact, and the ends are clean with their original white cotton fringe. Bakhtiar weavers worked with mountain wool that is coarser and springier than city wool, which is exactly why a 50 year old piece like this still reads as thick underfoot rather than tired. The drawing is village drawing, confident and slightly irregular where the weaver adjusted the pattern by eye, and the palette has that settled, mellowed quality that only comes with decades. Every rug we ship leaves with a certificate of authenticity documenting origin, materials and construction.

Design and Motifs

The layout is the classic village medallion rather than the garden panel format Bakhtiar is equally known for. At the center sits a large ivory medallion with stepped, scalloped edges, and inside it a black core holding an 8 petal rosette drawn in coral, cream and soft yellow, surrounded by radiating leaf blades and small flowering sprays. A pendant cartouche in ivory floats off each end of the medallion, and around the whole thing runs a scalloped salmon pink outline that separates it from the field. The burgundy field is packed edge to edge with an all over floral vine: cross-shaped rosettes, curled serrated leaves, small blossoms and paired bird-like buds on thin olive stems, drawn small so the ground never goes quiet. Deep navy corner spandrels carry oversized ivory and coral palmettes with curling leaves, and they pull the eye out to the border. The main border is brick red with alternating palmettes and rosettes, flanked on both sides by ivory guard borders of linked blossoms and a fine outer minor stripe. These are Persian tribal rug motifs handled with unusual patience for a village piece.

The Brick Burgundy, Navy and Ivory Palette

The field is a warm brick burgundy, a red with brown and wine in it rather than a bright tomato, and it shifts slightly from panel to panel as the wool takes the dye differently, which is the abrash you want to see in a hand-dyed piece. Against it the spandrels and border outlines are a very dark indigo navy that reads nearly black in low light and opens up to blue in daylight, visible in the close detail shots. Ivory does the heavy lifting: the medallion ground, the pendants, the guard borders and dozens of small blossoms scattered through the field, all in a creamy off-white that keeps the red from feeling heavy. Threaded through everything is a soft salmon pink used for the medallion outline, the larger palmettes and the leaf tips, and it is that pink that gives this rug its age and softness. Supporting colors include olive green in the vine stems, a dusty gray-blue in some of the rosettes, chocolate brown in the border detail, and touches of pale yellow at the very center. The overall effect is warm and traditional, and it sits easily with wood floors, leather, brass and dark cabinetry.

Bakhtiar Weaving in the Zagros Foothills

Bakhtiar rugs come from the Chahar Mahal va Bakhtiari region southwest of Isfahan, woven in villages such as Shalamzar, Saman and Chaleshtar by settled families of the Bakhtiari confederation. The wool comes off sheep grazed in the high Zagros pastures, and it is famously strong and lanolin-rich, which is why these pieces are bought as working floor rugs for the busiest rooms in a house. Construction is the symmetrical Turkish knot on a cotton foundation, beaten down hard, giving a heavy rug with real body rather than a limp one. Knot count in this group is moderate by design; the weavers were never chasing fineness, they were building something that survives generations, and a piece from the 1970s still standing this tall proves the point. If you want to understand what puts a rug in a particular decade, our guide on how to date an Oriental rug walks through the same clues we used here. At this scale it belongs with other 10x14 Persian rugs, covering a large room wall to wall with furniture fully on the pile.