4'3" x 6'6" Persian Sarouk Rug | Wool | Red

A 4'3" x 6'6" hand-knotted rug from Persia with a wool pile, worked in the Sarouk manner. At a glance it reads as a deep red field scattered edge to edge with small floral sprays in blue and gold, held inside a dark navy border. It is a rectangular format in the usual Sarouk proportion, a little narrower than it is long, and one of many hand-knotted rugs of this kind we handle.

Design

The field has no medallion in the formal sense. Instead a single large rosette sits at the centre, its petals outlined in pale yellow, flanked by curving serrated leaves and two broad fan-shaped blossoms above and below it. Around that centre the ground is filled with detached sprays: upright stems carrying small rosettes in rows, paired cypress-like sprigs, and vases of blossom that stand on the horizontal axis at either end. The drawing is repeated rather than mirrored exactly, so the two halves of the field are close without matching. The main border runs a chain of palmettes and split leaves on a dark ground, each palmette alternating with a long leaf, and this is framed on both sides by a narrow guard stripe of reciprocal zigzag and a thin floral minor band.

Colour

The field is a madder red that shifts across the rug, closer to rose in the open areas of the upper half and to brick where the pile lies against the light, as the angled photographs show. Against it the blues do most of the work: a dark indigo for outlines and for the border ground, and a lighter sky blue inside the small rosettes. Yellow-gold carries the leaves and the centre of the rosette, and warms the border where it meets the navy. Rust-brown appears in the larger blossoms, with a few small touches of ivory in the spray heads. The corner photograph shows the border field reading more coppery brown than the deep navy of the outer band.

Making

Hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation, with the back showing an even, regular grid of knots and the design legible from the reverse. The table dates it to the 1930's and gives the condition as excellent; the pile still has body in the field, and the rolled edge in the photographs shows the selvage and the short ivory fringe intact at the ends. The weave is firm enough to lie flat without curling at the corners.