3'7" x 14'11" Persian Heriz Runner Rug | Brick Red Field with Stepped Medallions | Excellent Condition

A true gallery-length Persian Heriz runner at 3'7" x 14'11", hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation and still carrying a full, even 3/8" pile across all 179 inches of its length. Runners of this length are not easy to find in village weaving, because the loom has to be dressed and tensioned for months of work with no room for drift, and this one holds its width honestly from fringe to fringe. The brick red field runs the whole way, broken by a column of stepped medallions, and the wool has that dry, slightly lustrous handle that Heriz weaving is known for. Condition is excellent, with clean selvedges, original ends and no restoration worth noting. Every rug we ship travels with a certificate of authenticity confirming it as a hand-knotted piece made in Persia, and this runner is ideal for a long hallway runner placement where a shorter rug would simply look stranded.

Design and Motifs

Instead of one central medallion, the weaver ran a vertical sequence of stepped, star-shaped medallions down the length of the field, each one outlined in ivory so it reads crisply against the red. The medallions alternate in character: some are built around a saffron gold center with a small rosette at the heart, others sit on a darker aubergine ground with a salmon starburst, so the eye never settles into a repeat as it travels the 14'11". Between them the field fills with the vocabulary of classic geometric Persian rugs: serrated leaves, hooked arrowheads, small cypress forms, angular blossoms and tiny latch-hook brackets tucked wherever space allowed. The main border is a dark ground band carrying evenly spaced 8 petal rosettes and star flowers, framed inside and out by narrow ivory and sawtooth guard stripes that keep the long sides from reading heavy. Everything is drawn in straight lines and stepped diagonals, with no curved vine anywhere, which is exactly what tells you this is village drawing rather than a workshop cartoon.

Color Palette

The field is brick red, a warm terracotta-leaning red rather than a cool crimson, and it shifts gently along the length the way hand-dyed wool does when the weaver moves from one batch to the next. Against it the drawing runs in near black and deep navy, used for the outlines, the leaf forms and the main border ground, which is what gives the runner its graphic snap from a distance. Ivory does the structural work: it rims every medallion, carries the guard stripes and supplies the small white blossoms scattered through the field. The accent colors are saffron gold and mustard in the medallion centers and leaf bodies, a clear mid sky blue in the serrated leaves and arrowheads, soft salmon and rose in the starbursts and border rosettes, and a muted olive green in the smaller foliate forms. There is also a quieter chocolate brown and a dark plum inside several medallions. Read as a whole it is a rich, saturated, many-colored palette held together by the constant red ground and the black border, so it sits comfortably on dark hardwood and equally well against a pale painted wall.

Heriz Origin and Weaving Quality

Heriz is a cluster of weaving villages on the slopes east of Tabriz, in the shadow of Mount Sabalan in northwest Persia. The water there is mineral-rich, and local sheep grow a wool that is famously tough and slightly coarse, high in lanolin, which is why Heriz pile compresses under traffic for generations instead of shedding away. Weavers in these villages work from memory and from village templates rather than a drawn cartoon, which is why Heriz design is angular: straight lines, stepped corners and medallions built out of squares and triangles that a weaver can count on the warp. Village Heriz weaving typically sits below 200 knots per square inch, and that is not a shortcoming but part of the recipe, since the heavier knot and the thicker wool are what make the rug behave like a floor covering built for daily life. On a runner this long the real test is consistency of width and tension, and this piece passes it: the borders stay parallel, the medallion column stays centered, and the back shows an even, tight, regular knot throughout its 14'11".