11'8" x 15'2" Persian Heriz Rug | Rustic Red Geometric Medallion | Semi-Antique 1970s Oversize

Woven in the 1970s in the Heriz villages of northwest Persia, this 11'8" x 15'2" piece is the classic village room-filler: a heavy cotton foundation, a full 3/8" wool pile and a big, confident geometric medallion drawn in straight lines rather than curves. Half a century on the loom-side of the story and the pile is still even from end to end, with no bald areas, no repiling and complete original ends and sides. At nearly 12 by 15 feet it belongs in the small group of genuine oversize Persian rugs that can carry a large living room or a long dining table without looking crowded. It ships with a certificate of authenticity documenting origin, age, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The field is organized around a large stepped medallion on a midnight blue ground, with a rose red inner frame and a gold and ivory 8 petal rosette holding the exact center. Long serrated pendants run north and south off the medallion, and 4 corners are filled with open ivory spandrels drawn with angular vines, star flowers and hooked leaves. What fills the space between is pure Heriz vocabulary: big palmettes, serrated lancet leaves, small stars and stiff-armed vine scrolls, all drawn in straight segments because the weavers worked from memory and a village cartoon rather than a curvilinear court design. The main border alternates rosette cartouches and diamond palmettes on dark navy, framed by a rose red vine guard on both sides. Buyers who like this kind of bold, drafted drawing usually look at other geometric Persian rugs, but few of them come in this scale.

A Rustic Red Field With Navy and Ivory

The ground color is a rustic madder red that shifts between brick and terracotta as the light moves across the pile, with gentle horizontal abrash bands that prove the wool was dyed in small lots. Against it, the medallion and border read as a deep indigo navy, nearly black in the shadows and clearly blue where the light hits the corner detail. Ivory does the structural work: the open spandrels, the outline that traces every step of the medallion, and the clean undyed fringe at both ends. Secondary colors are quieter and give the rug its depth, including sage and pine green in the leaves, camel and old gold in the rosette and border cartouches, a soft rose pink in the smaller flowers, and sky blue picked out in the palmettes and the vine guard. The overall temperature is warm, which is why a red Heriz of this size sits so easily on oak, walnut and stone floors.

Heriz Weaving and Village Quality

Heriz is a cluster of villages east of Tabriz, on the slopes below Mount Sabalan, and its reputation comes from the wool and the water. The local flocks grow a long, high-lanolin fleece, and the mineral-rich water used in washing is credited with the hard, glassy finish that lets a Heriz survive generations of traffic. Weavers there knot on a thick cotton warp and weft at a village density, generally under 200 knots per square inch, which is not a fineness competition but a construction choice: fewer, larger knots with a heavy pile make a floor covering that simply does not give up. That is why an oversize Heriz from the 1970s can still show a full 3/8" pile today. This one was woven for a large room from the start, symmetrical end to end, with the medallion centered and the borders squared, the mark of an experienced loom rather than a rushed commercial order.