11'7" x 18'2" Heriz Design Oriental Rug | Oversize Red Geometric Medallion | Made in India

This is a genuine palace piece: 11'7" x 18'2" of hand-knotted wool, woven in India in the 2000s to the classic Heriz drawing, and still in perfect, unworn condition. The pile is thick and even from end to end, the selvedges are tight, and the cotton warps run straight, which is exactly what you want in a rug this large because a 200 pound floor covering shows every shortcut a weaver takes. Very few looms are built wide enough to attempt this format, which is why genuine oversize 12x18 rugs in good condition come up so rarely. It ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming the hand-knotted construction, the wool pile and the country of origin.

Design and Motifs

The layout is the textbook Heriz formula, drawn here with more detail than most village versions carry. A large stepped medallion sits dead center on a black ground, built from a salmon rosette core, a slate blue diamond and 8 radiating palmette arms outlined in ivory. Above and below it, two hooked pendants extend toward the ends, and the 4 corners are filled with big ivory spandrels packed with angular leaf forms, serrated vines and small hooked latch motifs. Across the open red field, the weaver has scattered oversize angular leaves, split palmettes and star rosettes in slate blue, salmon, ivory and moss green, so the ground never reads as empty even at this scale. The main border runs on a deep black ground with alternating ivory rosettes and forked branch motifs, framed on both sides by salmon and light blue guard stripes carrying a running vine. It belongs firmly with the strongest geometric rug designs, where every line is straight, stepped or hooked and nothing curves.

A Deep Red Field with Ivory, Black and Green

The field is a deep, saturated red that leans toward wine rather than orange, and the wool takes the dye with enough luster that the color shifts between cool and warm as you walk around it. Against that red, the ivory spandrels and the ivory outlining do all the structural work, making the medallion and the corners jump forward instead of sinking in. The black border grounds the whole piece and keeps the red from spreading visually past the edge. Inside the drawing there is a much wider palette than the photographs first suggest: soft slate blue, salmon and terracotta, a clean bone ivory, small touches of moss and forest green in the leaf tips, and tan and camel notes in the border rosettes. The plain red outer band beyond the guard stripe is unusually wide, which gives the design a quiet frame and makes the rug easy to live with under furniture.

Woven in India in the Heriz Tradition

India is where most of the world's good contemporary hand-knotted work is now made, and we say that with confidence: the best Indian workshops have the wide looms, the trained weavers and the wool supply to produce a room-size floor like this one at a level of drawing and finish that few other places can match today. The knots here are firm and regular, the pile has been shorn evenly, and the back reads clean and legible, with the pattern fully visible through the weave. Heriz is one of the most recognizable names in the whole Oriental rug vocabulary, and this weaver has honored the tradition rather than simplifying it, keeping the hooked outlines, the stepped medallion and the crowded corner brackets that give the design its character. Bought new in the 2000s and never put into service, it is ready for decades of use.