5'5" x 13'9" Persian Hamedan Rug | Tulip Pink Herati Field | Ivory Diamond Medallion, Excellent Condition

This is a gallery length piece, 13'9" long and only 5'5" wide, the proportion Persian villages have always woven for long reception rooms and the open side of a hall. The field runs tulip pink over its full length, carrying a fine all-over Herati lattice, with a single ivory diamond medallion set slightly below center and deep indigo corner spandrels closing the ends. The pile is hand-knotted wool at 3/8", clipped evenly, seated on a cotton foundation, and the rug reads clean and full across every photograph. Condition is excellent, with no repairs, no thin areas and both ends intact behind their original fringe. A certificate of authenticity accompanies the rug, confirming it as a hand-knotted piece woven in Persia.

Design and Motifs

The drawing is classic Herati, the mahi or fish pattern: a diamond lattice with a small rosette at each junction, flanked by 4 curving lanceolate leaves that older dealers read as fish circling a pond. Hamedan weavers draw it tighter and more angular than the workshop towns do, and here the repeat marches the full 13'9" without drifting, which takes real discipline on a loom this long. The central medallion is a stepped ivory diamond with hooked outlines, filled with indigo and rose palmettes around a small blue lozenge, and finished top and bottom with slender pendant finials. Navy spandrels anchor the 4 corners and give the long field a beginning and an end. The main border carries an ivory ground turtle palmette meander between narrow reciprocal guard stripes, a border family you will see across the best all-over Persian rug designs.

The Tulip Pink and Ivory Palette

The field color is the reason to buy this one. It is a tulip pink, a madder red that has softened toward rose and blush, warmer and lighter than the hard brick reds most village rugs carry, and it shifts between a deeper brick tone and a dusty pink as the nap turns to the light. Against it, the ivory of the medallion and the main border is a clean unbleached cream rather than white, and it does the work of separating field from frame. The accent color is indigo, used two ways: a bright cornflower blue in the small rosettes and leaf stems, and a near-black navy in the corner spandrels and the outlines. Scattered through the lattice are soft sage green rosettes, charcoal outlining and small pale pink blossoms that lift the pattern when you look closely. Together they land in the pink and rose Persian rug range while keeping the traditional red, cream and blue structure intact.

Hamedan: Weaving Town and Quality

Hamedan sits in western Persia at the foot of Mount Alvand, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world and the collecting point for hundreds of surrounding villages that have woven on the same single wefted looms for generations. That construction, one weft shot between rows of knots, is what gives a Hamedan its characteristic flat, firm handle and its reputation for outlasting the household that bought it. The wool from this highland region is long stapled and high in lanolin, so the pile keeps a quiet sheen and resists crushing under furniture, and the dyes settle into that mellow tone you see in the field here rather than staying raw. This piece is a good example of what the region does best: honest village weaving, a disciplined court pattern rendered by hand without a cartoon, and a scale rarely found in Persian Hamedan rugs of this age and condition.