4'3" x 15'3" Persian Runner Rug | Wool | Red and Black

A long runner measuring 4'3" x 15'3", hand-knotted in Persia with a wool pile clipped to 3/8". From a few steps back it reads as two colours, a red ground held inside a close black lattice, and only on approach does the third layer appear: a small flowering plant standing in the middle of every compartment, each one worked in ivory, gold and pale pink.

Design

The field is a continuous diamond lattice drawn in heavy black outline, the compartments interlocking the full length of the rug without a medallion or any break in rhythm. Inside each diamond sits an upright spray of five or six blossoms on a short stem, and the triangular spaces left between the diamonds are filled with small chevrons and hooked brackets that alternate ivory and red. The main border carries a meander of rosettes and serrated leaves on a red ground, flanked by narrow guard stripes of reciprocal dots and a thin dark line that separates border from field cleanly, as the angled view in the third photograph shows.

Colour

The ground is a warm tomato red that pulls towards brick in the pile and lightens noticeably across one band of the field, the kind of shift that comes of a change of dye lot mid-weave. Against it the lattice is a dense black with a brown cast where the wool has taken the light. The flowers supply the rest: butter gold, chalky ivory, a soft salmon pink, and in the border an olive green that cools the whole edge down.

Making

Hand-knotted throughout, with a 3/8" wool pile on a foundation that is visible in the fourth photograph where the corner is turned back: the lattice and the border flowers read almost as clearly from the reverse as from the face. Condition is good. Among the hand-knotted work we carry, a Persian runner of this length, more than fifteen feet at a little over four feet wide, is an uncommon proportion and suits a long corridor or a wide stair hall.