10' x 13' Persian Sheik Safi Rug | Signed Safavid Medallion Design | Burgundy & Graphite Black

This is a signed Persian Sheik Safi rug in a true room size, 10' x 13', hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation with a 3/8" pile that still stands full and even across the whole field. The drawing is the classic Safavid formula: one lobed graphite black medallion floating on a burgundy ground, four matching corner spandrels, and a floral field that never repeats itself twice in the same place. A woven signature cartouche sits in the ivory guard border at one end, which tells you this came off a named loom rather than an anonymous village frame. The rug is in excellent condition with clean, original cotton fringe, and it ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming it as a genuine hand-knotted Persian piece. If you are shopping the 10x13 Persian rugs range, this one gives you a formal court design at a scale that actually fills a large room.

Design and Motifs

The Sheik Safi layout is one of the most demanding classical designs a weaver can take on, because every element has to answer to the center. Here the medallion is a wide lobed oval in graphite black, filled with pale scrolling arabesques and holding an inner salmon cartouche with a small rosette at its heart. Two pendant finials, drawn like cypress-shaped lamps, hang from the top and bottom of the medallion and pull the eye down the long axis of the rug. The 4 corner spandrels repeat the same black ground and the same vine work, so the burgundy field is left as a clean open shape in the middle. That field is filled with an all-over floral: large palmettes, Shah Abbasi blossoms, split serrated leaves and thin curling vines that link one flower group to the next. The main border is a black ground running a rhythm of palmettes and rosettes, flanked on both sides by ivory guard stripes carrying a turtle-and-vine meander, with a narrow red selvage finishing the outer edge. The signature cartouche is woven into the ivory guard at one end in fine red script.

A Closer Look at the Burgundy, Ivory and Graphite Black Palette

The field is a saturated raspberry burgundy, a red with real blue in it rather than a flat brick tone, and it shifts noticeably with the nap: stand at one end and it deepens toward wine, walk to the other and it lifts toward rose. Against that, the medallion and border read as graphite black, close to a blackened navy, which is what gives the rug its weight and keeps the floral work from turning busy. The ivory guard stripes are the pressure valve, a clean bright line that separates the black border from the red field and frames the whole rug. Inside the drawing, the accent palette is much broader than the three main colors suggest: soft salmon and apricot in the medallion center, rose and old pink in the petals, sage and moss green in the leaves, sky blue and teal in the smaller blossoms, and touches of caramel and chocolate brown in the border palmettes. Those secondary tones are what make this piece work in a room that already has color in it. For buyers building around this depth of red, it sits naturally alongside the rest of our red and burgundy Persian rugs.

Persian Origin, the Sheik Safi Tradition and Weaving Quality

The Sheik Safi design takes its name from the shrine of Sheikh Safi al-Din, and the pair of Safavid court carpets woven for it in the 16th century remain the reference point for the whole medallion-and-spandrel tradition in Persia. Workshops across the country have drawn versions of it ever since, and the test is always the same: can the weaver hold a true curve through the medallion lobes and keep the vine work symmetrical over 13 feet of length. This rug passes that test. Look at the back photograph and the knotting is small, tight and regular, the rows stay straight, and the design comes through the reverse as cleanly as it reads on the pile side, which is the honest way to judge a hand-knotted rug. The wool is good quality, densely packed, with the slight sheen that comes from healthy fleece rather than from a wash. The cotton foundation gives the piece the flatness and stability a rug this size needs so it lies dead flat under furniture. A woven signature is a workshop marker in Persia, not decoration, and it is a large part of why a piece like this holds its value.