10' x 13'4" Persian Herati Rug | Dark Indigo Field, Deep Orange Medallion | Semi Antique Wool Pile

Rolled out flat, this 10' x 13'4" Persian rug reads first as a wall of dark indigo, then resolves into thousands of small Herati figures marching across the field in a perfectly disciplined lattice. A deep orange diamond medallion sits dead center, with matching salmon corner spandrels pulling the eye out to a brick red main border. The pile is 3/8" wool on a cotton foundation, dense underfoot and still carrying the natural sheen of good hand-spun yarn, and the condition is excellent with even pile from edge to edge and clean original selvages. At 10 feet by just over 13 feet it covers a full seating group or a large table without crowding the walls, one of the most usable proportions in the house and a natural fit alongside our other 10x13 Persian rugs. It ships with a certificate of authenticity documenting origin, materials and construction.

Design and Motifs

The field is pure Herati, the pattern also called mahi or fish: a small rosette set inside a diamond, flanked on 4 sides by curved lanceolate leaves that older weavers read as fish circling a pool. Here the repeat is tight and unbroken, one of the cleanest examples of all over Persian rug designs, with each rosette alternating between gold, ivory, rust and pale blue so the grid never turns monotonous. The center medallion is a plain-sided diamond outlined in an ivory sawtooth band, filled with its own smaller Herati sprays and 8 dark palmettes arranged around a tiny central rosette. The corner spandrels repeat the same sawtooth outline in salmon, each carrying scrolling vine and detached palmettes. The main border runs alternating turtle palmettes and rosettes on brick red, framed by narrow teal green guard stripes of running floral meander, and the whole rug is closed with a solid indigo outer band and ivory fringe.

A Palette Built on Dark Indigo and Deep Orange

The two colors named on the spec do most of the work, and they work because they sit at opposite ends of the wheel. The ground is a dark indigo that shifts toward aubergine where the light rakes across the pile, the kind of deep blue that looks almost black from a doorway and opens up to violet when you stand over it. Against that, the medallion and spandrels are a warm deep orange reading as salmon, soft rather than loud, which is what keeps a field this dark from feeling heavy. The border is a clear brick red, and inside it the drawing is picked out in teal green, dark navy, chocolate brown, gold and chalk ivory, with small touches of pale blue in the rosette centers. Those teal and ivory notes are the detail most buyers miss in photographs and notice immediately in person, particularly along the guard stripes in the corner shot.

Persian Origin and Weaving Quality

The Herati pattern is the great shared vocabulary of Persian weaving, carried from workshop to village across the country for well over two centuries, and a rug this size shows whether the weaver could hold the repeat. This one holds it: the lattice stays square across 10 feet of width, the medallion lands true on both axes, and the border corners are resolved rather than cut off, which is the first thing to check on any large piece. The back photograph shows tight, regular knot rows on a cotton foundation with no bulges or pulled wefts, and the 3/8" wool pile has the springy hand of highland fleece rather than the flat feel of machine-spun yarn. Wool that dense in a dark indigo dye lot is exactly what makes these rugs live for generations under furniture, foot traffic and children.