6'10" x 9'11" Persian Bijar Rug | All-Over Floral Lattice with Vase Motifs | 1980s

Pick this one up by one end and you understand what you are buying. This 6'10" x 9'11" Persian Bijar rug was woven in the 1980s with a short 3/8" wool pile on a cotton foundation, beaten down so hard at the loom that it lies dead flat on the floor and holds its shape without a pad fighting it. Instead of a central medallion the weaver filled the whole field with a fine floral lattice, which is why the rug reads as continuous pattern rather than one focal point. At a working 7x10 Persian rug footprint it sits under a full seating group with the front legs of the furniture on the pile. It ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The field is set out as a diamond lattice, each compartment outlined by a chain of tiny ivory and navy blossoms and filled with a small flowering vase, a rosette or a pair of curling leaves. Look closely at the corner photograph and you can count the repeat: slender vases in navy and olive rising out of leafy bases, 8 petal rosettes in ivory, and clusters of tulip and carnation heads scattered between them. That kind of small-scale, tightly repeated drawing is exactly what an all-over Persian rug design is meant to do, filling the room evenly rather than forcing the furniture to arrange itself around a medallion. The main border runs a deep navy ground with a continuous arabesque vine and open palmettes, flanked by olive guard stripes of angled leaves and by narrow outer bands of pearl-like ivory florets. All 4 corners resolve cleanly, which on a village-scale lattice is a sign of a weaver following a properly drawn cartoon.

A Salmon Red Field Framed in Navy and Olive

The dominant color is a red that has softened toward salmon, warm and slightly dusty rather than a hard crimson, the kind of tone that comes from natural dye settling over several decades. Against it the lattice is drawn in inky navy blue, which does most of the outlining work, with ivory and beige carrying the flower heads so the pattern stays legible from standing height. Olive green appears in the leaves and again as the ground of the inner guard stripes, cooling the pink and keeping the rug from reading as sweet. Gold and soft ochre run through the outer bands and the vine work, while pale sky blue turns up in the border leaves and in a few of the smaller blossoms. The selvedge and kilim ends are the same salmon tone as the field, and the fringe is clean ivory. Practically speaking this palette is easy to live with: it sits comfortably with warm woods, cream walls, blush and navy upholstery, and brass or antique gold fittings.

Bijar, the Iron Rug of Persia

Bijar sits in Kurdistan in western Persia, and the Kurdish weavers there built a reputation on a single technique: wetting the warps and driving each row of knots down with a heavy metal comb, so the finished rug is denser and heavier than anything else woven at a comparable knot count. That is where the old dealer nickname, the iron rug of Persia, comes from. These pieces do not crush, they do not ripple, and they survive traffic that would flatten a lighter weave. Weaving from the surrounding district varies, and it is worth understanding how Bijar, Bijar Zanjan, Bijar Tekab and Bijar Bukan differ before you buy. This example shows the town workshop hand: fine lattice drawing, disciplined borders, a low even pile and the characteristic weight and body across all 9'11" of its length.