2'4" x 13'2" Persian Karaja Runner Rug | Repeating Diamond Medallions | Excellent Condition

At 28" wide and over 13 feet long, this 2'4" x 13'2" Persian Karaja runner was woven for exactly the kind of space most rugs cannot serve: a narrow hallway or long corridor where width is fixed and the run keeps going. It is hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation, with a full 3/8" pile that still stands dense and even from one end to the other, and the condition grades excellent with the ivory outlines and selvedges intact. The drawing is unmistakably northwest Persian village work, confident and geometric rather than drafted on a cartoon, with a single column of stepped diamonds carrying the whole length. Every rug we ship leaves Freeport with a certificate of authenticity identifying it as a genuine hand-knotted Persian piece.

Design and Motifs

The field is a stacked column of diamond medallions, each one stepped in a fine ivory zigzag that reads almost like dentil moulding when you look along the runner. Inside each diamond sits an 8 petal rosette with a squared blue core and a small red eye at the center, surrounded by tulip heads, leaf sprays and tiny hooked buds on a rose ground. The spaces between the diamonds are filled with dark ground panels carrying half rosettes and blossom clusters, so the pattern locks together with no dead space. A narrow main border of blossom heads and paisley-shaped flower forms on mid blue runs both sides, flanked by thin reciprocal guard stripes in ivory and copper. This is the drawing collectors look for in geometric Persian rugs: repeating, rhythmic and drawn by hand, with small variations between medallions that prove no cartoon was followed slavishly.

A Copper, Rose and Ivory Palette

Color is what carries this runner. The diamond centers are a soft rose that sits between salmon and old pink, and because they are set against a very dark aubergine and near black ground, they lift forward and give the column of medallions real depth. Copper brown and brick red run through the lattice outlines, the blossom fillers and the outer border ground, which is what pulls the whole piece into a warm, aged tone rather than a bright one. Ivory does the structural work: the zigzag diamond frames, the reciprocal guard stripes and the small leaf tips that punctuate the dark panels. The main border shifts to a clear mid blue, the one cool note in the rug, with rose and ivory blossoms and a scatter of apricot and soft green accents that only show when you crouch down. On a dark wood floor the rose reads pink; against a pale floor the copper and brown dominate, so the same runner will look different in two different hallways.

Karaja Weaving in Northwest Persia

Karaja is a small weaving village in the Azerbaijan region of northwest Persia, in the hill country of the Ahar district northeast of Tabriz, and its looms have specialized in long narrow formats for generations. The house style is geometric and repeating, built from stacked medallions rather than a single central design, because that structure can be extended to whatever length the corridor demands. Weavers there work wool pile on a cotton foundation with a firm beat, using the tough, slightly lustrous highland wool of the region, which is why Karaja runners wear so well in exactly the high traffic lanes they are made for. The knot count here is honest village work, not workshop fineness, and that is the point: a heavier knot and a 3/8" pile give you a rug that takes daily footfall for decades, holds its color, and keeps the crisp ivory outline of every diamond across all 13'2".