10' x 13' Persian Heriz Rug | Red Field, Ivory Spandrels | Geometric Stepped Medallion

This is a proper village Heriz in the classic room size, hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation with a 3/8" pile that still stands full and even across all 4 corners. The drawing is bold and confident: a large stepped medallion anchored dead center, deep ivory spandrels filling the 4 corners, and a navy main border carrying a steady march of palmettes and hooked vines. Condition is excellent, with clean selvedges and original ends, and the weave photographed against a ruler shows the honest, chunky village knotting that makes these rugs last through generations of traffic. At 10' x 13' it covers a full seating group or a 10 seat dining table, and it sits squarely in the most searched of all 10x13 Persian rugs. Every rug we ship travels with a certificate of authenticity documenting its origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The center medallion is built in layers: an 8 point gold rosette at the core, ringed by a serrated light blue star, then a broad navy and red cross-shaped frame edged in ivory outline, with lobed pendants reaching north and south toward a pair of small hexagonal cartouches. Around it the red field is packed with angular palmettes, hooked serrated leaves and small bent-stem blossoms, all drawn in straight lines rather than curves, which is exactly how Heriz weavers translate a court floral idea onto a village loom. The ivory spandrels repeat the same vocabulary in miniature, dense sprays of stylized leaf and blossom that give the corners real weight instead of leaving them empty. The main border alternates rosettes and angular vinework between narrow reciprocal guard stripes. If you gravitate toward this kind of drawing, it belongs with the best geometric Persian rugs.

A Madder Red Field Framed in Ivory and Navy

The field reads as a warm madder red with brick and terracotta movement through it, the kind of gentle tonal variation that comes from natural dye lots rather than a flat machine color. Against it, the corner spandrels are a soft unbleached ivory closer to cream than white, which lifts the whole rug and keeps the red from feeling heavy. The border is a deep indigo navy, nearly black in the close-up photographs, and it does the work of framing the composition. Secondary tones fill in the detail: a dusty light blue in the medallion frame and leaf forms, olive gold in the central rosette and border rosettes, chestnut brown in the spandrel grounds, and small touches of rose and pale apricot in the blossoms. Under lamplight the wool takes on a low sheen, and the red deepens toward wine, while daylight pulls the ivory and blue forward.

Heriz: Village Weaving East of Tabriz

Heriz is a cluster of weaving villages in northwest Persia, east of Tabriz on the slopes below Mount Sabalan. The mineral-rich water there is credited with the famously tough, high-luster wool that makes a Heriz pile resist crushing decades longer than most, and the local looms work from memory and village pattern rather than a fully painted cartoon, which is why the curves come out as clean straight lines and stepped corners. Weaving is on a heavy cotton foundation with a thick wool pile, so the rug has body and weight underfoot. Village Heriz work generally sits under 200 knots per square inch by design, since the value here is durability and graphic power rather than miniature detail, and this piece shows exactly that balance: a sturdy, evenly beaten weave carrying a large-scale design that holds a room from across the floor.