10' x 13' Persian Ardebil Rug | Navy Blue Geometric Medallion | Sunset Orange Border

This 10' x 13' Persian Ardebil rug is a full room-size piece hand-knotted in the far northwest of Persia, where the stepped geometric medallion has been drawn the same way for generations. The navy blue field is deep and remarkably even, the drawing is crisp from corner to corner, and the wool carries the dry mountain handle that makes weaving from this district so hard-wearing. It belongs to the 10x13 Persian rugs class that anchors a full seating group rather than floating inside it, and the 3/8" pile has enough body to carry furniture legs without crushing. It ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming the hand-knotted construction, origin and materials.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a broad stepped geometric medallion built in three rings: a gold outer field scattered with small rosettes and leaf sprays, a brick red hexagon filled with 24 upright boteh-like cartouches, and a sky blue inner panel closing on a tiny star rosette. Above and below the medallion sit hooked anchor pendants with fan-shaped tails, a drawing you find in the best village work from this district and one of the reasons collectors seek out geometric Persian rugs in room sizes. Large sky blue palmettes reach in from the 4 corners across the open navy ground, and ivory spandrels carry small flowering vines and diamond rosettes. The main border runs a rust ground with alternating ivory lozenges and 8 petal star flowers, framed by narrow reciprocal guard stripes and a fine barber-pole selvedge line that keeps the whole composition tight.

Navy Blue, Gold and Sunset Orange

The field is a saturated midnight navy with a faint indigo shift where the light crosses the pile, and because so much of it is left open the color reads as a solid ground rather than a pattern. Against it the gold medallion surround is the brightest note in the rug, closer to saffron than lemon, and it lifts the brick red hexagon at the center. Sunset orange carries the border, a softer terracotta brick than the field reds, broken by ivory lozenges and touched with small points of pink, green and pale yellow. Sky blue does the connecting work, appearing in the corner palmettes, the inner medallion panel and again in the border flowers. Ivory in the spandrels and the guard stripes keeps the navy and the rust from meeting hard. In a room with warm wood floors, as the photographs show, the navy grounds the space and the orange border picks up the floor tone.

Woven in Ardebil, Northwest Persia

Ardebil sits in the high country of northwest Persia below Mount Sabalan, a cold plateau district whose flocks produce long, springy, lanolin-rich wool. Weavers there work on a cotton foundation with a firm beat, which is why an Ardebil holds its shape in a 10 by 13 size instead of waving at the ends. The back photograph shows the point clearly: even rows, tidy knot heads, straight selvedges and a clean ivory fringe, with the pattern reading almost as sharply from behind as it does from the face. Ardebil drawing stays angular by choice, every curve resolved into steps and straight lines, and the medallion here is cleanly centered with the pendants sitting true on the axis. At a 3/8" pile the rug is substantial underfoot while still showing the detail in the border, and in excellent condition with even pile throughout it is ready for daily use in a busy room.