5'9" x 10'6" Persian Hamadan Rug | Wool | Dull Red

A hand-knotted wool rug from Persia, measuring 5'9" x 10'6" in a long rectangular format. The field is an open dull red, left almost bare between the medallion and the border, and carries one large navy medallion at the centre with a smaller pendant above and below. The borders are broad in proportion to the field, which gives the rug a heavy frame and a quiet middle. One of several hundred hand-knotted pieces in our full collection.

Design

The Hamadan drawing here is built around a single octagonal medallion on a navy ground, stepped at the shoulders and outlined first in olive green and then in a thin band of teal. At its centre sits an ivory eight-lobed rosette with a brown square at the very middle, ringed by small red flowerheads and striped bars in salmon and rust. Above and below, narrow stalks run out to lozenge pendants and then to anchor-shaped finials that reach well into the field. The corner spandrels are the same navy as the medallion, filled with scattered rosettes and small stepped cartouches, and separated from the red ground by a sawtooth ivory line that runs the full length of the rug. The main border is navy, carrying alternating star rosettes and crab-like palmettes in red, teal and ivory, between narrow olive guard stripes of repeating four-petal flowers. At the two ends a brown-ground band of stylised vase and cypress figures closes the composition.

Colour

The field reads as a dull brick red, slightly deeper along one side where the pile lies against the light, with faint horizontal striation across the open ground. Against it the medallion and spandrels are a near-black navy, cool enough that the red looks warmer than it is on its own. The ivory centre and the sawtooth outline carry the eye, and the secondary colours are small and repeated: olive green in the outlines and guard stripes, a mid teal in the border rosettes and medallion motifs, salmon pink in the striped bars, and a few points of rust orange. The outer band of soft brown keeps the whole thing from ending abruptly on the dark border.

Making

Hand-knotted in wool with a 3/8" pile, woven in Persia to a Hamadan design. The handle is firm and the pile even, with the slight irregularities in the field colour that come from a wool ground dyed in separate lots. Condition is given as excellent, and the photographs show the ends and sides intact with the fringe trimmed short at both ends.