4' x 10'3" Persian Sarough Rug | Red Field with Sage Green Medallion | Excellent Condition

Almost everything in this 4' x 10'3" piece is held back so that one thing can carry the rug: a single round medallion, sage green and pale, floating on a field of deep unbroken red. The drawing is confident and quiet, the wool has the soft sheen that comes from a well spun local fleece, and the pile is even from selvage to selvage with no thin spots. Classic Persian Sarough rugs are known for exactly this balance of open ground and tightly detailed ornament, and this one is a textbook example in excellent condition. It ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming it as a hand-knotted rug woven in Persia.

Design and Motifs

The red ground is shaped into a large cusped reserve with scalloped shoulders and small curling hooks along the sides, so the field itself reads as a drawn form rather than a plain background. At its center sits a round medallion ringed by a sawtooth band of teal and ivory arrowheads over a dark navy edge, enclosing a sage green disc filled with a 12 point floral rosette, pink and cream lotus heads and small blue leaf sprays. Above and below, two pendant bouquets of 16 rosettes in pink, white, aubergine and slate blue rise toward a teal palmette finial. The 4 corners are solved with ivory spandrels carrying 8 petal star rosettes on thin leafy branches. The main ivory border alternates red palmette cartouches with blue and pink floral clusters on a continuous vine, framed inside and out by lavender guard stripes of running meander.

A Deep Red Field Against Sage Green and Ivory

The field is a true madder red, warm rather than orange, and it shifts very slightly in tone across the width the way naturally dyed wool does, which keeps such a large open area alive instead of flat. Against it, the sage green medallion center is the surprise: soft, almost dusty, a color rarely given the leading role in a red Sarough. The teal and navy ring around it supplies the depth, and the ivory arrowheads give the whole medallion a crisp cut edge. Ivory does the rest of the work, carrying the spandrels and the main border in a creamy oatmeal tone that cools the red down. Accent colors are drawn from a small, disciplined palette: rose pink, dusty lavender, aubergine brown so dark it reads near black, and a clear mid blue in the border flowers. Nothing shouts, and the red stays dominant from across the room.

Sarough Weaving in Central Persia

Sarough weaving comes out of the villages around Arak in central Persia, a region that has supplied the American market with serious floor rugs for well over a century. The reputation rests on substance: a heavy cotton foundation, a thick, tightly packed wool pile, and curvilinear drawing executed with enough knots to keep the medallion outlines smooth rather than stepped. The reverse of this rug, shown against a ruler, tells that story clearly, with straight even knot rows and a clean legible pattern coming through the back, which is the mark of a weaver working carefully from a proper cartoon. That density is why Sarough rugs from this tradition survive generations of real use and still show a full pile, as this one does.