6'9" x 11'2" Persian Hamedan Rug | Wine Red Floral Medallion | Excellent Condition

A hand-knotted wool floor piece built the way village weavers in western Persia have always built them, this rug measures 6'9" x 11'2" and sits in the sweet spot for a room that needs coverage without going oversize. The wine red field is drawn with a single stepped ivory diamond at center, long pendants running toward each end, and a navy main border that frames the whole thing cleanly. The 3/8" wool pile is even from end to end with no low spots, the sides and ends are sound, and the colors are still deep rather than washed out. It is one of the easier large Persian rugs to live with, because the pattern is busy enough to hide everyday traffic and the red ground is forgiving. Every rug we ship leaves here with a certificate of authenticity recording its origin, materials and measurements.

Design and Motifs

The center of the field holds a stepped ivory diamond medallion with a notched, almost crenellated outline, and inside it an 8 petal rosette core worked in sky blue, camel and brick red around a small central disc. Two red teardrops sit at the medallion's east and west points. The medallion floats on a dark navy cartouche whose arms break into curling vine, serrated leaves and small white blossoms, so the dark ground acts like a shadow around the ivory. Above and below, the field runs out into long ribbed palmettes and arrowhead pendants, flanked by sprays of split leaves, rosettes and tiny flowering stems typical of Hamedan village drawing: confident, a little angular, never mechanical. The corner spandrels carry navy anchors with the same palmette and leaf vocabulary, giving the field 4 corners that mirror each other closely. The main navy border alternates striped candle palmettes with ivory and red eight petal blossoms, bracketed by a camel vine guard stripe on one side and a fine zigzag stripe on the other, then an outer ivory reciprocal band that keeps the whole composition from bleeding into the room.

A Wine Red Field Worked in Navy, Ivory and Camel

The ground is a true wine red, a deep madder tone that reads slightly brick in direct light and closer to oxblood in shade, which is exactly why two of the photographs look warmer than the full overhead view. Against it, the navy is nearly inky at the medallion surround and in the main border, dark enough to look black until the light catches it. Ivory does the heavy lifting for contrast, in the medallion, in the border blossoms and in the small white leaf tips scattered across the field. Camel and soft gold carry the vine work and the inner guard stripe, warming the palette and keeping the red and navy from going heavy. The accents are the detail worth seeing in person: sky blue in the medallion core and in single blossom centers, a powdery rose on the border flower heads, a touch of ochre inside the central rosette. There is gentle abrash through the field, the natural banding you get when a dye lot shifts on a village loom, and it gives the red movement rather than flatness. Buyers shopping wine red Persian rugs will find this one sits comfortably with walnut and mahogany furniture, cream walls and brass.

Hamedan: Village Weaving in Western Persia

Hamedan sits in the Zagros foothills of western Persia and anchors the single largest weaving district in the country, with hundreds of surrounding villages feeding the town bazaar. That is why no two Persian Hamedan rugs draw a medallion quite the same way: the weaver works from memory and local habit rather than a city cartoon, and the small irregularities in the pendants and corner work on this piece are the signature of a hand, not a defect. The reverse side, shown against a ruler in the last photograph, reveals the flat tight back of a village weave with wefts laid between each row of knots, the construction that makes these rugs famously hard wearing. Highland wool from the district is coarse in the best sense, high in lanolin, springy underfoot and slow to show traffic, and at 3/8" the pile here is clipped for durability rather than for the fine drawing of a workshop town. This is a floor rug meant to be used, and after decades of that service it still shows an even nap and a clean, honest weave.