6'8" x 9' Persian Heriz Rug | Red Field with Navy Stepped Medallion | Ivory Spandrels | Excellent

This is a classic village Heriz in the most useful proportion the type comes in, 6'8" x 9', hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation with the firm, chunky handle that makes these rugs famous for outlasting the houses they are bought for. The drawing is entirely angular: a stepped navy and red medallion holding the centre, ivory spandrels cutting across the 4 corners, and an indigo main border carrying rosettes and stylised vase forms between narrow reciprocal guard stripes. The pile is even and the colours have settled into that slightly smoky, lived-with tone that collectors look for in a Heriz rather than the flat brightness of a new piece. It sits comfortably under a dining table or in front of a sofa, and like every rug we import it ships with a certificate of authenticity. Buyers working within the standard 7x10 footprint will find this among the most versatile 7x10 Persian rugs we carry.

Design and Motifs

Everything in the field is built from straight lines and stepped diagonals, which is how a Heriz is read at a glance. The medallion is a serrated star-and-hook form outlined in ivory, with an inner indigo cartouche and a small central rosette flanked by angular leaf sprays. Four pendant lobes reach out along the long axis, and the red ground around them is packed with serrated leaves, hooked vines, angular palmettes and small blocky devices that look almost like tiny animals and vessels in the close photographs. The ivory corner spandrels repeat the same vocabulary in reverse, pale ground with red and blue drawing, and they do the work of framing the medallion without softening the geometry. The main border alternates an 8 petal rosette in a round cream frame with upright vase-like forms and sprigs, while the inner and outer guard borders run a small repeating meander that keeps the whole composition tight. It is a good example of why collectors of geometric Persian rugs keep returning to this village group.

Color: Madder Red, Indigo and Ivory

The field is a deep madder red that reads brick in daylight and closer to wine under lamplight, and it carries gentle horizontal variation across the width from the dye lots of the original yarn. Against it the medallion and the main border go almost black-indigo, opening into a mid cornflower blue for the leaf work and the smaller filler motifs, so the blues give the rug its depth while the red gives it warmth. Ivory, slightly creamed with age, appears in the 4 spandrels, in the outline of the medallion and in the round border rosettes, and it is what keeps the palette from closing up. Burgundy and a darker oxblood sit in the palmettes and in the outer stripe, with small touches of camel and soft grey-green scattered through the drawing. Inside the medallion there is a clear band of lighter salmon where the dye lot shifted, natural abrash rather than wear or sun damage, and it is one of the marks of a genuine village weave. Shoppers browsing red and burgundy Persian rugs will find this one of the richer, less orange reds in the group.

Heriz: Village Looms East of Tabriz

Heriz is a group of villages east of Tabriz on the slopes below Mount Sabalan, in the northwest corner of Persia. The wool from that district is famously tough, and the mineral-rich water used in washing and dyeing is credited with the density and the clear, stable colour these rugs keep for generations. Weavers there work from memory and from village conventions rather than from a fully painted cartoon, which is why the curves of a city workshop are translated here into straight lines, stepped corners and serrated leaves. Knot counts in Heriz village work are typically well under 200 per square inch, and that is the point: fewer, larger knots on a stout cotton foundation give a thick, heavy rug that takes decades of traffic without thinning. The back of this piece, shown against a ruler, is firm and evenly beaten with straight rows, and the pile still has good body throughout. That combination of honest village drawing and genuine durability is why a well-kept Heriz in a practical 6'8" x 9' size stays in a family long after fashion has moved on.