10' x 12'9" Turkish Serapi Rug | Coral Red Geometric Medallion | Circa 1950s

This 10' x 12'9" Turkish Serapi rug was hand-knotted in wool in the 1950s, and it has the settled confidence of a weaver working a drawing he knew by heart. A single indigo medallion holds the center of a wide, mostly open coral red field, and the whole composition is framed by slate blue corner spandrels and a deep navy floral border. At 120 by 153 inches it is a genuine room-size Oriental rug, large enough to seat a full sofa group on top of it. The pile is full and even across the field, the selvages and ivory fringe are intact, and a woven cartouche sits in the lower border. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The Serapi drawing is built on restraint, and this piece follows it exactly. The central medallion is an 8 lobed indigo cartouche stepped at the edges, holding an apricot inner panel and a small red octagon with a pale blue rosette at its heart. Two green and coral palmette pendants drop from the top and bottom points, and two smaller finials reach out toward the sides. The field around it is left almost bare, so the eye reads the medallion first and the corner work second. Those corner spandrels are slate blue and crowded with hooked vine scrolls, shield shapes, 8 point stars and small bird-like leaf forms, separated from the field by a zigzag outline in green and camel. The main border runs navy with alternating rosettes and serrated leaves, flanked by a camel star guard stripe and a brick red minor border of green diagonal bars. Buyers who like this kind of angular, room-anchoring drawing will find more in our geometric medallion rugs.

The Coral Red, Indigo and Sage Palette

The field is a warm coral red that leans toward brick and terracotta, and it carries a gentle abrash, faint horizontal bands where one dye lot met the next. That movement is what keeps a large open field alive instead of flat. Against it, the medallion and main border are a deep indigo navy, nearly black in the shadows of the close-up shots, while the spandrels take a softer slate blue that reads almost dusty teal in daylight. Sage and olive green outline the leaves and zigzags, apricot and camel light up the guard borders and the medallion interior, and small hits of ivory, pale blue and rose appear in the rosettes and stars. It is a red and blue rug at a distance and a 6 color rug up close. In practice it grounds cream, oatmeal and walnut furniture without fighting them, which is exactly how the styled room photograph reads. For more pieces at this footprint, see our 10x13 Oriental rugs.

Turkish Weaving in the Serapi Tradition

This rug was made in Turkey, where workshops have long woven the Serapi vocabulary for large formal rooms: a single medallion, open ground, angular corner pieces and a bold floral border. The wool is the tell. Turkish highland fleece is springy and high in lanolin, and you can see it in the way the pile stands up in the folded and rolled photographs, with a clean sheen along the cut ends and no brittleness at the fold. The knotting is even and the drawing is disciplined, with the zigzag field outline running straight for 12'9" without wandering, which is not easy at this width. The back shows a clear, regular grid and the edges are hand-finished, with the original ivory fringe still full at both ends. A woven cartouche in the lower border marks the weaver or workshop, a detail collectors look for when judging a mid-century piece; our guide on how to date an Oriental rug covers what else to read on a back like this one.