6'8" x 9'8" Persian Sarough Rug | Navy Blue All-Over Floral | 1980s Fine Wool

Woven in the 1980s, this 6'8" x 9'8" piece is a textbook example of the classic Persian Sarough rug formula: a deep navy blue ground carpeted from selvedge to selvedge with detached floral sprays, held inside a salmon red main border. The pile is fine wool clipped to 3/8", dense underfoot and still completely even, with no low spots and no restoration. It sits squarely in the 7x10 Persian rugs range, the most usable size in a formal room, and the dark ground makes it one of the easier floral rugs to live with day to day. Every rug we ship leaves Freeport with a certificate of authenticity recording origin, materials, size and knotting.

Design and Motifs

There is no medallion here. Instead the weaver filled the field with freestanding bouquets, curling serrated leaves, small palmettes and 8 petal rosettes, each spray set on its own stem and arranged on an invisible diagonal lattice so the eye travels across the rug rather than stopping in the center. The drawing is mirrored along the long axis, which is why matching pairs of blossoms line up on either side of the middle, and the spacing is tight enough that the navy ground reads as outline rather than empty space. Four narrow guard stripes separate the field from the main border, two of them carrying a running chain of small boteh and paisley buds, one a ribbon of tiny blossoms on cream. The main border repeats a large rosette alternating with a full blossom head and paired leaves, and the corners are resolved cleanly rather than cut off, which is the mark of a weaver following a properly drafted plan. The ends finish in plain ivory cotton fringe and the sides in a dark overcast selvedge.

A Navy Blue Field With Red, Cream and Teal Detail

The field is a true midnight navy, deep enough to look near black in low light and to show its blue only where the pile catches a lamp or window. Against it the flower heads come forward in cream and soft beige, in a brick to tomato red, and in a dusty light blue that cools the whole scheme down, with stems and leaves in olive brown and a quieter teal. The main border steps the temperature up: a salmon to rose red ground, faded just slightly warmer than the reds in the field, carrying ivory blossoms with navy centers and blue green leaves, so the frame glows while the field stays dark and recessive. Mocha brown and a touch of aubergine appear in the smaller rosettes, and the guard stripes alternate cream and slate blue to keep the transition from field to border from feeling abrupt. If you are building a room around a dark ground, this is the sort of piece that anchors navy and blue Persian rugs without going cold, because every blue in it is balanced by a warm red or cream.

Sarough Weaving and Quality

Sarough is a weaving town in the Arak district of central Persia, in the old Sultanabad weaving belt, and its rugs have been the benchmark for durable formal floral work for more than a century. The style is built on substance: a cotton foundation, heavy wool wefts beaten down hard between rows, and a tightly packed wool pile that gives these rugs their characteristic weight and their reputation for lasting through generations of family use. This example follows that tradition closely, with the all-over spray layout that Sarough looms produced for the American market and the thick, firm handle you feel the moment you turn a corner of it over. The wool is springy and takes light well, the knotting is consistent from end to end with no drift in the pattern, and at 1980s age the colors have settled into one another without any of the harshness of a brand new piece. Among Persian Sarough rugs, a clean navy ground example in this size and condition is the one most buyers are actually looking for.