4'3" x 6'9" Persian Sarouk Rug | Tree of Life Design | Antique 1930s Navy Field

This is a genuine antique from the 1930s, hand-knotted in west central Persia on a cotton foundation with a dense natural wool pile, and it has aged the way good Persian Sarouk rugs are supposed to age. At 4'3" x 6'9" it sits in that useful in-between size that works in front of a sofa, beside a bed or under a small reading chair. The midnight navy field is unusual for the period, when most Sarouk weavers of the 1930s worked on a rose red ground, and it makes the rust and gold flowering branches read with real depth. The back photo shows tight, regular knotting and clean, undisturbed selvages, and the pile is still even across the whole field. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The field is drawn as a tree of life composition built from repeating flowering branches: slender gold and rust stems rising from small footed vases, each carrying clustered rosettes, serrated leaves and open blossoms. A small lobed medallion with an ivory outline anchors the exact center, and the sprays around it are arranged in mirrored ranks so the rug reads the same from either end. Nothing crowds; the weaver left generous dark ground between the branches, which is what gives this piece its floating, botanical quality rather than the packed look of later commercial work. The border system runs 5 bands deep: a broad rust red main border of alternating palmettes and leafy cartouches, flanked by 2 narrow navy vine guards and finished at the outer edge with a golden ivory band of small blossoms, visible in detail in the corner photograph.

A Midnight Navy Field With Rust, Gold and Soft Green

The ground is a deep midnight blue that shifts toward inky black in the shadows and opens to a clear indigo where the light catches the pile, the kind of abrash you only get from natural dye lots on hand-spun wool. Against it, the drawing is carried in brick and rust red, a warm apricot gold that outlines many of the stems, and a soft sage to blue-grey green used in the leaves and inside the border blossoms. Small touches of pale ivory appear in the rosette centers and in the medallion outline, and the outer guard band is a mellow golden straw that frames the whole rug and keeps the navy from feeling heavy. Buyers hunting for navy blue Persian rugs should know how rare a genuinely dark-ground Sarouk of this date is, and how well this palette handles oak floors, walnut furniture and cream walls.

Sarouk Origin and Weaving Quality

Sarouk is a village in the Arak district of west central Persia, and the weaving that carries its name built its reputation on heavy, long-wearing wool and a stout cotton foundation that keeps a rug flat and square for generations. That is exactly what this piece shows: a thick, springy pile with plenty of meat left on it after roughly 90 years, firm handle, and knotting even enough that the mirrored floral ranks line up cleanly from side to side. The back photograph tells the story better than any adjective, with straight warp lines, tight rows and no repairs or reweaves interrupting the pattern. If you want to understand how weavers, wear patterns and dye behavior are read when you date an antique Oriental rug, this Sarouk is a textbook example of an honest 1930s workshop piece that was cared for properly.