5' x 17'1" Persian Kazak Runner Rug | Geometric Tribal Medallions | Red Orange & Royal Blue

Runners of this length are unusual, and one that is 5 feet wide is rarer still. At 5' x 17'1" this is a gallery-scale piece: wide enough to read as a proper rug underfoot, long enough to carry an entire corridor, a stair hall or the open side of a loft without a seam or a break in the drawing. It is hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation with a 3/8" pile that still stands up crisply across the whole length, and the condition is excellent. A Kazak layout at this scale gives the weaver room to repeat a bold medallion again and again, and the slight shifts in size and color from one to the next are exactly what tells you a person drew this from memory rather than from a printed cartoon. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity. If you are shopping specifically for a long hallway runner, very few handmade pieces reach this combination of width and length.

Design and Motifs

The field carries a single column of large stepped medallions marching the full length of the runner. Each one is built from a camel or aubergine ground panel with an ivory and blue diamond rosette at its heart, flanked above and below by gold and blue palm-like crest motifs, then wrapped in a broad latch hook and fretwork outline that steps outward in perfect right angles. The weaver alternates the outline color from medallion to medallion, green to cobalt to soft violet, so the eye keeps moving down the runner instead of settling. Between the medallions the open ground is filled with small ivory and blue diamond rosettes, 8 point stars hung from thin stems, miniature cypress and shrub figures, and outlined triangle amulet motifs tucked into the corners. This is the honest vocabulary of geometric rugs from the village looms: straight lines, hooked edges, no curved vines anywhere. The royal blue main border repeats a large palmette and rosette figure in mauve, gold and green, fenced by narrow ivory reciprocal guard stripes that keep the whole 17'1" length visually tight.

A Red Orange Field Against Royal Blue

The ground is a warm red orange with real movement in it, closer to terracotta and tomato than to a flat commercial red, and it shifts lighter and darker in soft horizontal bands as the dye lots change up the loom. That abrash is a virtue, not a flaw, and it is the reason a 17 foot field never looks printed. Against it the main border reads deep royal blue, almost cobalt where the light catches the pile and nearly navy in the shadow of the fold. The medallion outlines supply the third voice: a clear grass green in some, a mid cobalt in others, one or two drawn in a dusty violet that leans lavender. Saffron and mustard gold pick out the crest motifs and the triangle corner figures, ivory appears only in the small diamond rosettes and the guard stripes, and a bottle green shows up in the border palmettes and the tiny shrub fillers. Mauve and aubergine on the medallion grounds bridge the red and the blue, which is why a palette this loud still settles into a room instead of fighting it.

Kazak Weaving in the Persian Village Tradition

The Kazak design came south out of the Caucasus and was absorbed by the village and nomadic weavers of northwest Persia, who kept the bold geometry and the big hooked medallions and wove them in their own tough, long-staple wool. This runner belongs squarely to that lineage of tribal rugs: a chunky, confident knot, a heavy handle, and a pile with enough lanolin left in it that the surface has a low sheen rather than a dry finish. The back photo shows the weave clearly, even and well beaten down, with the wefts running straight and the selvages wrapped tight, which is why a piece this long has stayed flat and square instead of running crooked. Village looms of this kind were built for family use, so the knot count stays moderate and the value sits in the wool, the natural dye palette and the drawing. This is a rug meant to be walked on for another lifetime, and at 5' x 17'1" it was clearly woven for a long room in a specific house.