5'6" x 10' Persian Sarouk Rug | All-Over Floral Coral Field | Circa 1950s

This is a 1950s Persian Sarouk rug in the long gallery proportion that decorators keep asking for and rarely find, 5 and a half feet wide by 10 feet long. The pile is full, the wool still has that greasy lanolin sheen under raking light, and the coral ground carries the gentle tonal drift that only comes from hand-spun yarn and seventy years of settling. Turquoise spandrels at the 4 corners are the detail that separates this piece from the thousands of ordinary red Sarouks on the market, and the near-black indigo border frames the whole thing with real authority. It ships with a certificate of authenticity documenting origin, materials and age.

Design and Motifs

The field is a classic all-over floral composition built from detached sprays rather than a single medallion, so the pattern reads evenly from every direction and furniture can sit anywhere on it without cutting off a focal point. Stacked bouquets of ivory and blue rosettes climb thin brown vines, punctuated by squared 4 petal blossoms, small serrated leaves and the little comb-like devices that Sarouk weavers scatter between the sprays. Toward the center the sprays gather into a loose rosette cluster edged in navy, visible in the close-up photographs. Four turquoise spandrels curl in from the corners with their own miniature garden of pink and coral flowerheads. The main border runs alternating palmettes and angular floral bunches on indigo, flanked by ivory guard stripes carrying a meandering vine, with narrow reciprocal barber-pole stripes in turquoise and red keeping the frame crisp.

A Coral Field Against Indigo and Turquoise

The ground is a rustic coral, warmer and more orange than the usual Sarouk madder red, and it shifts across the width in soft horizontal bands of abrash where one dye lot met the next. Against it the drawing works in two blues: a deep indigo that reads almost black in the border and a cornflower to steel blue that fills the small rosettes. The turquoise is the surprise, a clear aqua used in the corner spandrels and in the thin outlining lines, and it lifts the whole palette out of the dark antique register. Ivory and cream carry the larger flowerheads, chartreuse and acid yellow pick out leaf tips and border stems, and salmon pink, olive and a few notes of wine red fill in the smaller blossoms. Seen from the back, the reverse is dominated by blue, which tells you how much of the drawing is done in those cool tones even though the eye reads coral first from across the room.

Sarouk Weaving in West-Central Persia

Sarouk is a village north of Arak in west-central Persia, at the heart of the old Sultanabad weaving district, and its reputation was built on two things: heavy, springy highland wool and a tight, well-beaten knot on a cotton foundation. Rugs from this group were made to be walked on for generations, which is why so many survive with usable pile long after lighter city weaves have gone bare. This piece shows the hallmarks clearly in the fold photographs: even knot rows, a firm handle with real weight to it, and straight selvages with the original ivory cotton fringe still attached at both ends. The 1950s production sits in a sweet spot, old enough for the dyes to have mellowed and the wool to have polished, recent enough that the structure is completely sound. If you want to understand how weavers, dealers and specialists read those clues, our guide on how to date an Oriental rug walks through the same signals we used here.