6'3" x 9'4" Persian Heriz Rug | Geometric Medallion, Ivory Spandrels | 1980s Wool Village Weave

This is a classic village Heriz from the 1980s, hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation and still carrying a full, even pile after 40 years. The drawing is confident and entirely geometric: a wide brick red field, a dark stepped medallion that fills most of the center, and crisp ivory spandrels that push the eye straight to the middle. At 6'3" x 9'4" it sits in the most useful of all room sizes, and buyers shopping 6 x 9 Persian rugs will recognize how well this footprint anchors a seating group or a modest dining table. Every rug we ship leaves Freeport with a certificate of authenticity documenting origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The center holds an 8 point star cartouche in turquoise, outlined in ivory and set inside a large stepped medallion whose dark ground is packed with angular leaves, hooked vines and small blossoms. Pendants rise and fall from the medallion at both ends, each finished with a serrated leaf tip. The red field around it is not empty: it carries big curled palmettes, cypress-like sprays and small animal and bird figures drawn in the shorthand that village weavers use from memory rather than from a cartoon. Ivory spandrels fill all 4 corners with dense vinework, and the main border runs a black ground with alternating red rosettes and turquoise palmettes, framed by narrow guard stripes of tiny ivory daisies on brown. It is a textbook example of how geometric Persian rugs build a formal layout out of straight lines and steps instead of curves.

A Deep Red Field With Turquoise and Ivory Relief

The field reads as a warm brick red that shifts toward raspberry where the light catches the pile, with the gentle abrash you expect from wool dyed in small village batches. Against it, the medallion ground and the main border go almost black, a very dark charcoal brown that gives the whole rug its weight. Turquoise is the accent that makes this piece: it appears in the star center, in scattered leaves across the field and in the border palmettes, cool and slightly green next to the red. Ivory does the structural work in the spandrels, the medallion outline and the rosette guard stripes, keeping the dark tones from closing in. Softer camel brown, muted green and a pale gold appear in the vine work and in the smaller border flowers. Anyone building a room around red and burgundy rugs gets a palette here that reads rich under lamplight and grounded in daylight.

Heriz: The Weaving Villages East of Tabriz

Heriz is a group of weaving villages east of Tabriz, spread across the foothills below Mount Sabalan in northwest Persia. The water there is mineral-rich, and the local flocks grow a famously tough, slightly coarse wool that takes dye deeply and resists crushing under furniture, which is why Heriz rugs have a reputation for outlasting the houses they were bought for. The weavers work from memory on a cotton foundation, drawing in straight lines and stepped corners because that is what the loom and the tradition favor, and village knot counts generally stay under 200 knots per square inch. What you get in return is a thick, heavy, honest pile like the one here, a rug that belongs with the best of Persian tribal rugs and only looks better as the wool burnishes with use.