5'3" x 17'11" Persian Lori Runner Rug | All-Over Boteh on Red | Odd Size Gallery Length

This is a true gallery length piece: 5'3" x 17'11", wider than a standard hall runner and long enough to carry an entire corridor or the length of a large room without a seam or a second rug. The field is a deep brick red covered edge to edge with hundreds of small boteh sprigs, framed by a near-black border that reads almost charcoal in daylight. The wool has the heavy lanolin feel of tribal Persian tribal rugs, the 3/8" pile is even across the whole length, and the condition is excellent with no repairs to report. Sizes like this almost never appear twice, so if you have measured a long hallway or a gallery landing and found nothing that fits, this is the kind of rug that solves it. Every rug we ship carries our certificate of authenticity confirming it as a hand-knotted Persian piece.

Design and Motifs

The field uses the boteh, the curved almond or paisley figure that tribal weavers draw from memory rather than from a cartoon, repeated in staggered rows over the full 17'11" run. Each figure sits on a short stem with a small crown and a bright center, so the field reads as a dense all-over boteh design with no medallion and no open space to interrupt it. Look closely at the detail photographs and the drawing shifts slightly from row to row, with some botehs leaning left, some right, and a few drawn a shade larger, the honest signature of hand weaving without a workshop grid. The main border carries its own repeating boteh and diamond chain on a very dark ground, outlined on both sides by narrow guard stripes of salmon and copper that lift the dark band away from the red. A slim inner stripe separates border from field and keeps the whole long format visually tight.

Color Palette

The ground is a warm brick red that moves between terracotta and a deeper madder tone along the length, the natural abrash of wool dyed in small batches. Against it the botehs are worked in sage and grey green, soft taupe, ivory and salmon, with small coral centers that act as points of light across the field, clearest in the macro photograph. The border is a very dark brown black, close enough to charcoal that it anchors the whole runner and makes the red look richer by contrast, while its motifs pick up the same salmon, sage and ivory from the field. The ends are finished with plain ivory fringe. As a warm red rug it sits easily with wood floors, worn leather, brass and antique furniture, and it is one of the simplest ways to bring a long stretch of hallway to life.

Lori Weaving and Quality

The Lori, also spelled Luri, are the pastoral tribes of the Zagros mountains in western Persia, and their weaving is the opposite of city work: no fine curvilinear drawing, no workshop cartoon, just strong geometry, saturated dye and wool of unusual strength from flocks kept at altitude. That mountain fleece is what gives the pile its springy, slightly glossy handle and why Lori pieces survive decades of foot traffic without going thin. This runner is woven on a cotton foundation with a firm, consistent beat down, visible in the back photograph where the knot rows run straight and the selvages are still tight and original. Extra long formats like this were woven for long village rooms where guests sat along the walls, which is exactly why they now suit the proportions of a modern corridor so well. If you are comparing extra long Persian runner rugs, note that very few reach 18 feet in a single piece and fewer still at this width.