12' x 15'10" Heriz Design Oversize Rug | Stepped Star Medallion | Hand-Knotted in India, New

At 144" by 190", this piece covers a full great room, a 12 seat dining table with chairs pulled clear, or a double-height living room where a 9x12 would float. It is hand-knotted with a wool pile on a cotton foundation, new and never walked on, with crisp square corners, a heavy handle and the deep brick red field that makes this drawing work under low lamplight. It sits in the same weight class as our other oversize hand-knotted rugs, and like all of them it ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming the weave, materials and origin.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a stepped star medallion on a black ground, with an ivory inner cartouche built around an 8 petal rosette and a small slate blue square at the exact core. Eight gold serrated leaf blades push out from the medallion into the field, and four green and ivory palmette cartouches anchor the star points. The burgundy field is filled with angular leaf clusters, hooked vine stems and small ivory flowerheads drawn in the straight-line manner that defines Heriz style work rather than the curved vine of city floral rugs. Large ivory spandrels carry olive green and gold panel devices at each of the 4 corners. The main black border runs a chain of rosette medallions and gold vinery, flanked by a red floral guard stripe and a fine ivory meander, so the whole layout reads clearly from across a big room. Buyers who like this straight-drawn vocabulary usually shop our geometric rugs alongside it.

A Multi-Color Palette Built on Burgundy, Ivory and Black

The field is a deep burgundy red with a brick undertone, warm rather than orange, and it holds that tone evenly from one selvage to the other. Against it the spandrels and medallion center are a soft unbleached ivory, closer to cream than to white, which keeps the contrast rich instead of harsh. The medallion ground and the main border are a near-black charcoal, and that dark frame is what gives the rug its weight on a pale oak or travertine floor. Inside the drawing the accent colors do the work: mustard and old gold in the serrated leaves and border vinery, sage and olive green in the palmettes and leaf clusters, slate blue outlines around the medallion and the wave stripe, plus rust, cinnamon brown and a few small ash grey notes in the flowerheads. It is honestly a multi-color rug, so it pulls easily with cognac leather, brass, walnut and dark green upholstery.

Hand-Knotted 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 without hedging. The master weavers there work from full cartoons, spin and dye their own wool in small lots, and reproduce the classical Heriz vocabulary with a discipline that shows in this rug: the border chain meets the corners without a break, the medallion sits true to the center, and the pile is clipped low enough to keep the angular outlines sharp. The reverse tells the same story, with tight even rows on a cotton foundation and a firmly overcast black selvage, the marks of a piece built for decades of traffic in a busy room. If you are weighing where this sits next to other weaving groups, our guide on Oriental rug terminology explains exactly what the word covers and what it does not.