6'11" x 10'3" Persian Heriz Rug | Red Field with Ivory Corner Spandrels | Excellent Condition

This is a classic village Heriz in the size most American rooms actually need, a true 6'11" x 10'3" that sits comfortably under a sofa group or a six seat table. It is hand-knotted on a cotton foundation with a full 3/8" wool pile, and the wool has the dry, glassy handle that the Heriz district is known for. The drawing is all straight lines and angles, a stepped medallion floating on a deep madder red field with big ivory corner spandrels that open the whole composition up. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming origin, materials and hand-knotted construction. For anyone comparing 7 x 10 Persian rugs, this one earns its place on wool quality and condition alone: the pile is even edge to edge with no low spots.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a stepped diamond medallion outlined in ivory, filled with a cross shaped rosette in indigo and rose and fringed with small hooked barbs. Above and below it, twin anchor pendants in dark navy carry the axis out to the ends of the field, each one tipped with a serrated palmette. The red ground around the medallion is packed with angular leaf and vine work, hooked latch motifs, small blossoms and stiff serrated leaves, all drawn in the straight line vocabulary that separates true Heriz weaving from curvilinear city work. The 4 corners are given over to large ivory spandrels filled with a red and blue palmette cluster and more of the same angular vinework, and the contrast between the ivory corners and the red field is what gives this rug its presence from across a room. A wide navy main border runs turtle palmettes alternating with octagonal rosettes, framed on both sides by narrow guard stripes of small reciprocal motifs. If you like geometric Persian rugs, this is the pattern the whole category is built on.

Color: Madder Red, Ivory and Indigo

The field reads as a deep madder red, warm rather than orange, with the natural tonal variation you expect from dye lots that were mixed in small batches. Against it the ivory is genuinely creamy, closer to undyed wool than to bleached white, which keeps the corner spandrels soft instead of stark. The border is a very dark indigo navy that goes almost black in low light and resolves into blue where the light hits it, and that same navy repeats inside the medallion and in the outlines of the field motifs. Scattered through the drawing are rose pink, a lighter sky blue, a muted brown and touches of pale camel, all in small quantities so the palette never turns busy. The reverse of the rug, where the colors have seen no sunlight, shows the reds and blues at full saturation, which is a good sign that the front has aged gently rather than faded.

Heriz Origin and Weave Quality

Heriz is a group of weaving villages east of Tabriz, below Mount Sabalan in northwest Persia. The water there is mineral rich and the sheep produce a famously tough, high tensile wool, which is the reason Heriz rugs survive generations of foot traffic while finer city pieces wear thin. Weavers work from memory and from village templates rather than from a full cartoon, which is why the medallion is squared off and slightly asymmetrical, a characteristic of the type and not a fault. The knot count here is typical village work, well under the densities you find in Persian Tabriz rugs from the nearby city, but that is the point: heavier knots, thicker wool, a rug built for use. The back photograph shows straight, even rows and tight, well packed knots with clean color definition, and the selvedges and ends are sound throughout.