10' x 13' Persian Mahal Rug | All Over Herati Fish Design | 1970s, Excellent Condition

This is a village-woven Mahal from the 1970s, hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation and large enough to carry a full room at 10 feet by 13 feet. The field is a deep navy blue worked edge to edge in the Herati pattern, with no central medallion to anchor the eye, so the rug reads as one continuous textile rather than a formal centerpiece. The wool is glossy and the pile is still full, which is why it sits so well among other 10x13 Persian rugs: it has the softened color of five decades of age without the thin, tired handle that usually comes with it. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity recording origin, materials, age and knotting.

Design and Motifs

The field is the Herati, known in the trade as mahi or fish: a diamond lattice, a rosette set inside each diamond, and 4 curled lanceolate leaves turning around it so the leaves resemble fish circling a pool. Here it runs as a true all over design, repeated without interruption from border to border, with 8 petal rosettes and small palmettes scattered through the lattice to break the repeat. The main border sits on brick red and carries alternating lobed cartouches and shield palmettes outlined in dark navy, with vine scrolls looping between them. Two ivory guard borders frame it, each filled with a row of stiff teal and rose rosettes, and a fine barber pole stripe separates the bands. A plain navy outer band runs past the selvage and gives the whole composition a clean edge.

Color Palette

The ground is a dark indigo navy that shifts toward aubergine where the light catches the pile, a quality that places it comfortably with other navy blue Persian rugs. Against it the drawing is carried in two distinct reds: a clear brick red in the lattice and a softer rose red in the rosettes, which the close-up photographs show side by side within a single motif. Beige and ivory do the outlining work, lifting each leaf and rosette off the dark ground and keeping the field legible at a distance instead of going muddy. Soft teal appears in small quantities, in the rosette centers, in the border palmettes and in a few leaf tips, and it is the color that keeps the red and navy from feeling heavy. The borders invert the balance: red dominates, ivory frames, navy and black outline, with the same teal and rose repeating so the eye reads the rug as one palette rather than a field and a frame.

Origin and Weaving Quality

Mahal rugs are woven in the villages of the Mahallat and Sultanabad district of west central Persia, the weaving country around Arak, and they built their reputation on exactly this combination: large formats, bold repeating drawing and unusually strong local wool. The weave is a single wefted village weave rather than a fine workshop knot, and that is the point. A Mahal is built to be walked on, which is why so many of them from the 1960s and 1970s are still in service in entry halls and dining rooms today. The back of this piece shows an even, regular knot line across the full 13 foot length with no bowing or pulled edges, the selvages are intact, and the pile has the dry, springy handle of good Arak-region wool. Reds and navies this stable after 50 years indicate well-prepared dyes, and the original hand-woven rug tag is still attached to the back.