10' x 13' Persian Sarouk Rug | Navy Blue Field, Coral Floral Border | 1980s Formal Quality

This is a full room size piece from the 1980s, hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation and finished to the formal standard the best central workshops were still holding in that decade. The field is a deep navy blue, densely drawn, with a single radiating medallion at the center and a wide coral main border that lifts the whole rug in daylight. It measures a true 10' x 13', which is the classic proportion for a sofa-and-chairs grouping that needs all four furniture legs on the rug, and it belongs with the large-scale 10x13 Persian rugs we stock for exactly that layout. The pile stands at a full 3/8", the sides and ends are original, and there are no repairs or worn areas anywhere in the field. Every rug ships with a certificate of authenticity documenting origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The center holds an 8 petal rosette inside a coral disc, and from that disc the weaver has thrown out a full ring of turquoise and ivory rays, each one tipped with a small flowering vase, so the medallion reads as a sunburst rather than a static lobe. Around it sits a wreath of blue cartouches filled with brown and ivory leafwork, then the field opens into a dense all-over lattice of palmettes, curled saz leaves, carnations and rosettes on thin scrolling vines that never repeat in an obvious block. The 4 corners carry matching quarter spandrels so the drawing resolves cleanly at every edge. The main border runs a continuous coral ground of ivory palmettes and split arabesques, flanked by sky blue guard bands of small paired flower heads and a fine hair-thin outer stripe. This is the drawing style collectors call the Isfahan-quality Sarouk, curvilinear throughout, with no straight geometric shortcuts anywhere in the layout.

Navy Blue Ground with Coral, Ivory and Sea Green

The field is a deep indigo navy that photographs almost black in the shaded shots and opens into a clear ink blue under direct light, as in the angled corner photograph. Against it the palette is warm rather than cold: a soft coral that carries the full main border and the medallion disc, a paler salmon in the smaller flower heads, and plenty of ivory outlining that keeps every vine legible against the dark ground. The secondary blues do a lot of work here, a mid sky blue in the guard bands and in the leaf cartouches, and a lighter turquoise in the medallion rays. Sea green and olive appear in small quantities in the leaves and in the occasional bud, with warm brown and a touch of gold in the vine stems and in the outer selvage stripe. It is a navy and coral scheme, which means the rug sits comfortably with cream walls, walnut and mahogany furniture, brass, and leather in any tan or oxblood tone.

Sarouk Weaving and Quality

Sarouk lies in the Arak region of west central Persia, a weaving district that has supplied the American market longer than almost any other, and its reputation rests on two things: heavy, springy local wool and an unusually tight, even beat-down that makes a rug you can put under a dining table for 40 years. The best shops in the district worked from formal cartoons borrowed from the central court tradition, which is what you are looking at here, and that is why serious buyers of Persian Sarouk rugs pay attention to the quality of the drawing before anything else. Turn this one over, as in the back photograph, and the knot rows are straight and consistent from end to end with no pull or waisting, the cotton warps are firm, and the design reads as clearly from the reverse as from the pile side. That is workshop discipline, not village improvisation, and it is the reason a rug of this age is still sitting on a full pile with no restoration.