6'7" x 10' Persian Qum Rug | Signed Kork Wool | Navy Sarouk Floral Medallion | 1970s

A signed 1970s workshop piece in soft kork wool, this 6'7" x 10' rug reads the way a good Qum weave should: a deep navy field carried edge to edge with flowering vine, an ivory medallion floated dead center, and drawing fine enough that every petal keeps its outline. The pile still stands full and even across the whole surface, the fringes are complete, and the small cartouche woven into the lower border tells you this came off a named loom rather than a commercial run. It sits neatly among 7x10 Persian rugs that are meant to anchor a seating group rather than fill a room to the walls. Every rug we ship travels with a certificate of authenticity recording origin, materials, age and measurements.

Design and Motifs

The layout is a classic Sarouk medallion design, reworked here with the tighter, more curvilinear hand of a Qum workshop. A lobed ivory medallion holds a small red cartouche at its heart, filled with an 8 petal rosette and paired leaf forms, and throws a pendant north and south into the field. Around it the navy ground is packed with detached floral sprays, palmettes, serrated acanthus leaves and thin vine scroll, all drawn so the motifs never touch or blur into one another. The 4 corner spandrels break to red and repeat the medallion's flower work at a larger scale, giving the composition its second color beat. A wide ivory main border of scrolling rosettes and blossoms runs between narrow sage guard stripes and a dark zigzag minor band, and the weaver's cartouche sits centered in the lower guard, surrounded by the same small palmette rhythm rather than being set apart from it.

A Navy Field Read Against Ivory, Red and Sage

The field is a true navy, close to midnight in the shaded photos and showing its blue in raking light, and because it is so dark every other color in the rug gains a step of brightness. The medallion and the main border share a warm ivory that pulls toward pale cream in the pile and carries a faint green cast where the sage guard stripes sit against it. Red does the heavy lifting in the corners and in the small heart of the medallion, a cool cherry red rather than a brick tone, and it is echoed by the plain red outer band that frames the whole rug at the selvage. Inside the flowers the palette opens up: rose pink, sky blue, olive and moss green, soft gold, terracotta and a dark aubergine that reads almost black at a distance. The overall effect is jewel toned and formal, and it is easy to place against oak floors, walnut furniture or cream walls.

Qum Weaving and the Quality of This Piece

Qum sits south of Tehran and is the youngest of the great Persian weaving towns, with its workshops established in the 20th century and built from the start on fineness rather than tradition. Because the town had no old village style of its own, its masters borrowed the best court and city designs, Sarouk and Kashan medallions among them, and wove them at a knot count those originals rarely reached. Workshop rivalry there is intense, and it shows in pieces like this one: kork wool, the soft fleece taken from the lamb's neck, shoulders and underbelly, clipped low so the drawing stays crisp, on a cotton foundation that keeps the rug flat and square. Buyers who want the wider history of these looms will find it in our guide to Persian Qum rugs. Woven in the 1970s and kept in perfect condition since, this is the sort of signed wool Qum that is becoming difficult to find in a usable room size.