6'6" x 10'6" Persian Yalameh Tribal Rug | 15 Diamond Panel Design | Handspun Wool, Perfect Condition

Tribal weaving rarely arrives this disciplined. This 6'6" x 10'6" Persian Yalameh carries 15 panels across 5 rows of 3, each one holding a hooked diamond medallion, and the whole field is drawn freehand without a paper cartoon. The wool is handspun mountain fleece with real body to it, the pile is full and even end to end, and the weave is tight enough that the tiny stars and birds inside each panel stay crisp. It is a piece that sits comfortably in a room of 8 by 12 feet or larger, one of the more useful sizes among our large Persian rugs. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The field is divided into a grid of 15 square compartments, each framed by a narrow band of chequered squares and 8 point stars. Inside every compartment sits a large diamond medallion outlined in ivory latch-hooks and light blue sawtooth, with a small stepped lozenge at its heart. The weaver alternated the grounds deliberately, red diamonds on indigo panels next to indigo diamonds on red panels, so the grid reads as a checkerboard from across the room. One panel breaks the rhythm entirely: the centre compartment carries an ivory diamond scattered with green leaves and small blossoms, the visual anchor of the whole rug. Around the medallions the empty ground fills with tribal shorthand, cockerels and long-tailed birds, H shaped totems, cypress sprigs and scattered rosettes. The main border runs cream and rose palmettes alternating with 8 petal star rosettes on red, flanked by indigo guard stripes of meandering vine and a reciprocal saw-edge at the outer edge. Buyers who like this kind of drawing usually end up browsing our geometric rugs as well.

The Red and Indigo Palette

Two colors carry the rug. The red is a warm madder tone, closer to brick than to cherry, and it shifts very slightly panel to panel the way handspun wool always does. Against it sits a deep indigo navy, used both as a panel ground and as the wide outer border. Between those two anchors the weaver worked a mid light blue that does most of the drawing, outlining the diamonds, filling the small connecting bands and picking out the birds. Ivory provides the contrast line throughout and comes forward as the solid ground of the centre medallion and of the palmettes in the border. Soft sage and olive green appear in the rosette centres and leaf sprigs, beige and camel warm the border flowers, and small touches of aubergine and near black punctuate the star motifs and the guard stripes. It is a saturated, traditional palette rather than a washed one, and it holds up well against dark wood, leather and warm plaster walls.

Yalameh Weaving in Southern Persia

Yalameh rugs come from the villages around Aliabad and Shahreza, south of Isfahan on the road toward Shiraz, woven by settled weavers of Luri descent who kept the older nomadic design vocabulary alive. The wool comes off high-pasture sheep and is famously springy and lustrous, which is why a Yalameh feels heavier underfoot than its thickness suggests. The knotting here is denser and more regular than most Persian tribal rugs of this type, with straight selvages, level sides and a back that shows clean, evenly packed rows, as the fold shots make plain. Woven in the 2000's on a cotton foundation, this piece has never been walked on: the pile stands full from fringe to fringe, the colors are at their original strength, and the wool still has the natural lanolin sheen that a Yalameh only loses after decades of hard use.