6'10" x 10'10" Persian Heriz Rug | All Over Pattern | Rustic Red Geometric Wool

Most Heriz rugs put one big medallion in the middle and stop there. This one does not. The weaver filled the whole 6'10" x 10'10" field with repeating angular leaves, palmettes and small hooked rosettes, so the eye keeps traveling instead of settling. It is a hand-knotted wool rug on a cotton foundation, woven in the Heriz district of northwest Persia, and the pile has worn in evenly rather than worn down: the wool still has the dry, slightly glassy sheen that good Heriz fleece keeps for generations. At just under 7 by 11 feet it covers a standard seating group or a six-chair table without crowding the walls. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity, and this one is in excellent condition with sound sides and ends.

Design and Motifs

The field is drawn as a lattice of serrated leaf forms and blossom heads that repeats across the length, one of the classic all over rug designs of the Heriz villages. A single black eight-armed starburst sits at the center as a quiet anchor, ringed by a pale outline and flanked by paired hooked leaves, but it never takes over the composition. Every line is straight or stepped, drawn the way village looms handle a full-size cartoon, and that angularity is what separates Heriz drawing from the curved vine work of the city workshops. The main border carries alternating rounded palmettes and squared cartouches in cream and olive, set against deep indigo, with a reciprocal barber-pole guard stripe and a small rosette-and-box minor border on either side. Look closely at the field and you will find the small asymmetries that prove the loom: a leaf that leans slightly, a rosette swapped for a different color. Buyers who like this kind of straight-lined drawing usually end up browsing geometric Persian rugs as a group.

Rustic Red, Indigo and Olive

The ground is a rustic red that reads closer to warm brick and tomato than to burgundy, with the gentle tonal shift across the width that comes from dye lots changing as the weaving progressed. Against it the main border runs deep indigo blue, dark enough to frame the field firmly, and inside the border the drawing breaks into olive and khaki green, soft camel, and an ivory that has aged to a warm cream rather than a stark white. Salmon and dusty rose appear throughout the leaf outlines and small blossoms, a lighter mid-blue picks out individual motifs in the field, and the central starburst is worked in near-black charcoal for contrast. The palette is warm overall, so the rug sits comfortably on oak and walnut floors and with leather, brass and painted plaster. The close-up photographs show the color best: the field is not a flat block of red but dozens of small color events on a red ground.

Heriz Weaving and Quality

Heriz is a cluster of villages east of Tabriz, on the slopes below Mount Sabalan, and its reputation rests on two things: mineral-rich water that sets the dyes and gives them their lasting depth, and local wool that is unusually tough and high in lanolin. Weavers there work on a heavy cotton warp and weft with a symmetrical knot, which produces a thick, substantial rug built for daily traffic rather than for display. Village Heriz work typically runs under 200 knots per square inch, and the back of this piece, shown against the ruler in the last photograph, is consistent with that tradition: even rows, firm handle, no thin spots. That coarser structure is exactly why these rugs survive decades of use in hallways and living rooms while finer pieces need protecting. This example has held its pile evenly from end to end, and the wool still takes light the way only good Heriz fleece does.