6'9" x 10' Persian Sarouk Rug | Navy Blue All Over Floral Field | Lilihan Village Weave | Excellent Condition

A deep navy field, a small red rosette medallion at the center and a brick red border carrying split arabesques: this is the Sarouk formula done the way collectors like to see it, drawn in the Lilihan village manner with a light, airy vine rather than the heavy all over floral the district is usually known for. The rug measures 6'9" x 10', sits in the useful middle ground of 7x10 Persian rugs, and is hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation with a 3/8" pile that still stands up crisply across the whole surface. Condition is excellent, with full even pile, straight sides and tidy ivory fringe at both ends. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming it as a genuine hand-knotted Persian piece.

Design and Motifs

The field is organized around a small 8 petal rosette set in a lobed red cartouche, flanked by red fan palmettes and paired peach lotus blossoms that read almost like wings. Out from that center run long serrated leaves and thin cream vines studded with gold berries, curling back on themselves in mirrored pairs so the drawing stays symmetrical along both axes. At each end a slim flowering stem rises from a small base, a quiet echo of the tree of life, surrounded by tulip sprays, blue rosettes and single carnation heads. The 4 corners are filled with large red and cream floral sprays that fan outward, a detail Sarouk weavers use to stop the field from feeling crowded. The main border alternates navy leaves with reciprocal cream arabesques on red ground, held between narrow guard stripes of lozenge chain and small star flowers, and the whole composition stays open and readable rather than densely packed.

The Color Palette

The ground is a very deep navy blue, dark enough in the close-up photos to show a faint aubergine cast where the light falls across the pile, and it functions as a night sky for everything drawn on it. Against it the border red is a warm brick to tomato tone, slightly softer in the full-length showroom views than in the overhead shot, and it is repeated in smaller doses in the medallion, the fan palmettes and the corner sprays. Cream and ivory do the structural work: the vine scroll, the arabesques in the border and the guard stripe flowers are all drawn in that undyed wool tone, which is what keeps a dark field from going flat. Light blue and teal appear in the tulips, the small rosette centers and the quatrefoil accents beside the medallion, peach gives the lotus blossoms their blush, and a handful of soft greens and golden ochres turn up in the leaves and berries. The overall impression is a dark, formal rug with real warmth in it rather than a cool blue room piece.

Sarouk and the Lilihan Weave

Sarouk is a village in the Arak district of west central Persia, and its name came to cover a group of surrounding weaving villages, Lilihan among them, that share a cotton foundation, a heavy wool knot and a reputation for rugs that take decades of traffic without losing their shape. Lilihan pieces are traditionally lighter in drawing than the big floral Sarouks sold to the American market, with more open ground and a stronger central accent, which is exactly what you see here. The back photo shows an even, tightly packed knot with no pulling or crowding at the border turn, the kind of disciplined weaving that holds the fine cream vine lines without wobble. If you want the background on the district, the weaving families and how the designs changed over the twentieth century, read our guide to Persian Sarough rugs before you decide.