10' x 15' Serapi Heriz Design Oriental Rug | Burgundy & Black Field | Natural Ghazni Wool, Brand New

This 10' x 15' room-size piece is a brand new, entirely hand-knotted Oriental rug woven in Afghanistan from natural Ghazni wool on a cotton foundation. It has never been on a floor: the pile stands full and even end to end, the selvedges are tight, and the fringe is still crisp and unworn. At 150 square feet it sits squarely in the oversized rugs class, big enough to carry a full seating group or a 10 seat dining table with chairs pulled clear. Every rug we ship travels with a certificate of authenticity confirming that it is hand-knotted, along with its exact size, material and origin.

Design and Motifs

The drawing follows the classic Serapi formula, and the weavers have kept the line honestly angular rather than smoothing it out. A large stepped medallion in near-black anchors the center, built around a small burgundy panel framed in ivory and apricot, with 4 hooked arms and pairs of latch-hook cypress forms reaching out along the axes. Around it the burgundy field carries detached geometric sprays, serrated leaves, toothed comb motifs and small rosettes in ivory and gold, each one drawn in straight lines that step rather than curve. Ivory spandrels fill the 4 corners with scrolling vines, split palmettes and bold stylized blossoms, separated from the field by a sharp sawtooth edge visible in the close-up photographs. The main border runs on a black ground with alternating ivory hexagonal cartouches, gold rosettes and tulip stems linked by a burgundy vine, framed by narrow gold guard bands of small 5 petal flowers. It is one of the most recognizable statements in the geometric rugs family, and at this size the full pattern reads properly from across a room.

Color Palette

The field is a deep burgundy with a faint wine to brick variation across the width, the natural abrash of hand-spun wool taking dye slightly differently from batch to batch, which keeps a field this large from looking flat or printed. Against it the medallion and main border read as a dense black with a distinct olive green cast where the light catches the pile, a depth you can see clearly in the rolled-edge photograph. Ivory does the structural work: the spandrels, the sawtooth outline and the border cartouches are all worked in a warm cream rather than a cold white, so nothing jumps out of the scheme. Gold and soft apricot carry the rosettes, palmettes and the little cypress forms inside the medallion, adding warmth without brightness, and touches of rust and dark green appear in the smaller leaves and flower heads. The overall effect is a warm, saturated, traditional palette that sits comfortably with dark wood, leather and antique brass, and one that hides everyday traffic far better than a light field would. It belongs with the red and burgundy rugs group.

Origin and Weaving Quality

Afghanistan is where a great deal of the world's serious hand-knotted weaving now happens, and the Serapi group is the best demonstration of it. The pile here is natural Ghazni wool, the highland fleece prized for its long staple and high lanolin content, which is why the surface has a quiet sheen in the detail shots and why the pile springs back rather than crushing. The back photograph shows an even, disciplined knot line with no pulling at the medallion outlines and no drift in the border repeat, which on a rug 15 feet long is a real test of loom control and of the weavers holding one drawing across months of work. Selvedges are wrapped in matching burgundy wool and the fringe is the extension of the cotton warps, finished plainly and tightly. Nothing about this piece is machine-assisted or chemically washed thin: it is a heavy, dense floor rug built to be used for decades and to age well while it does.