6'4" x 17'2" Persian Tribal Rug | Gallery Size Runner | Antique 1940s Navy & Rust

This is a gallery piece rather than an ordinary runner: 17'2" long and a full 6'4" wide, broad enough to seat a sofa or a long dining table on it instead of simply walking down it. Woven in the 1940s on a village loom in Persia, it runs a chain of linked hexagonal medallions along a deep indigo field, framed by a brick red border of palmettes and ivory rosettes. The wool pile is low and evenly reduced by decades of honest use, with no holes, breaks or reweaves visible in the photographs, and the rug lies flat, stable and strong, selvedges intact and both ends still keeping their original striped kilim finish. Lengths like this almost never come up in good structural shape, which is why collectors of extra-long hallway and gallery runners move quickly on them. It ships with our certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The drawing is pure tribal geometry, laid out pole fashion so the design reads correctly from either end. Three large hexagonal medallions are linked down the center line, each stepped, each outlined by an ivory comb of tiny hooked teeth, and each filled with a lattice of small diamonds, rosettes and boteh in red, blue, gold and green. The indigo ground around them is never left open: it is packed edge to edge with angular vine work, serrated leaves, eight point stars and small stylized figures that read as birds and grazing animals, the sort of free-hand filler a weaver carries in memory rather than copying from a drawing. Navy spandrels close the 4 corners of the field. Beyond them, a wide rust red main border carries cartouche-like palmettes and ivory rosette bosses on a meandering vine, flanked by sky blue guard bands of diagonal blossoms and a narrow saffron outer stripe of reciprocal scrollwork. Motifs compress and stretch slightly where the weaver adjusted the repeat to fit the length, and small variations like these are one of the clearest ways to date an oriental rug and place it on a village loom rather than in a workshop.

Color: Indigo Navy, Rustic Red and Gold

Indigo does the structural work. Across the field it reads nearly black from a standing height and opens into a deep, slightly grayed blue when you crouch to it, with the drawing floating on top in lighter tones. The medallion interiors are rustic red, a soft brick terracotta that shifts lighter and darker in broad horizontal bands where the dye lot changed on the loom, and that natural abrash is one of the best things about the piece. The main border is a warmer, cleaner brick red, brighter than the medallion fields, and it is punctuated by ivory rosettes with rose pink and olive centers. Between border and field sit two sky blue guard stripes, a genuine mid blue rather than pastel, and the outermost stripe is saffron gold turning to old ochre where the pile is lowest. Scattered through the close-ups are celadon green leaves, aubergine and coffee brown outlines, cream white comb lines and small notes of clear yellow and coral orange. The overall effect in a room is warm and dark, red-dominant from a distance, far more multi-colored the closer you stand.

Origin: Persian Tribal Weaving in Gallery Format

Tribal and village weavers in Persia worked to the room, not to a catalog of standard sizes, and long narrow formats like this one were made for the long reception rooms and covered galleries of older houses. The knot count is village work, moderate rather than fine, and that is exactly the point: the value of a piece like this sits in the wool, the natural dye palette and the confidence of the free-hand drawing, not in knots per square inch. The wool is glossy, springy lambswool that has taken a deep patina from use, knotted onto a cotton foundation and finished with flat woven kilim ends, and the weave shows the slight width variation over 17'2" that any handloom of this age will. After roughly 80 years on a floor, the pile has worn low and even while the structure stayed sound, which is the best possible report card for a 1940s Persian tribal weaving of this length.