6'9" x 9'3" Persian Heriz Rug | Ivory Field with Navy Stepped Medallion | Semi-Antique Village Weave

This 6'9" x 9'3" Heriz is the version of the design that collectors hunt for: the open ivory field rather than the usual rust ground, which lets every angular leaf and vine read clearly from across the room. It is hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation, with a firm handle, a dense even pile and no thin spots or repairs, and the pile has enough age to have settled into a soft sheen without losing height. At 81" x 111" it covers a standard seating group or a table for 6 without crowding the walls. Every rug we ship leaves Freeport with a certificate of authenticity recording origin, materials and measurements.

Design and Motifs

The drawing is classic Heriz: a large diamond medallion on a navy ground, built up in stepped outlines with a rose 8 sided center rosette and 4 hooked palmettes radiating outward, each carrying a serrated leaf. Around it the ivory field fills with angular vinework, tiny stars, split-leaf tendrils and stylized blossoms, all drawn with straight lines and abrupt turns rather than curves, which is exactly how village looms translate a court floral into geometric Persian rugs. The 4 corner spandrels are brick red and heavily filled with blue palmettes and calyx forms, and they meet the medallion at crisp stepped diagonals. The main border runs a navy ground with alternating ivory rosettes and blue lozenges, flanked by narrow olive and rose guard stripes, and the border corners resolve neatly instead of being cut off, which tells you the weaver planned the layout rather than improvising the ends.

Color Palette

The field is a warm buttery ivory, closer to unbleached cream than to white, and it holds the whole composition open and bright, which is why it sits naturally with other ivory Persian rugs and with oak or pale wood floors. Against that ground the medallion reads near black at the outer edge and shifts inward to a clear mid-blue that the detail photo shows plainly, then to a dusty rose heart with small ivory and brown pips. The spandrels are a soft brick red with a faint abrash, a natural lightening across the weave that comes from hand-dyed yarn batches. Secondary colors are a smoky olive green in the guard stripes, walnut and coffee brown in the leaves, slate blue in the border lozenges and small touches of salmon pink in the rosettes. The overall effect is lighter and cooler than a standard red-ground Heriz, warm enough for a traditional room and quiet enough for a modern one.

Heriz Origin and Weaving Quality

Heriz is a cluster of weaving villages east of Tabriz, on the slopes below Mount Sabalan in northwest Persia. The local water runs mineral-rich, and the wool from the flocks there is famously tough and lanolin-heavy, which is why Heriz rugs are the ones that survive a century of family traffic and still show pattern. The knotting here is village work on a cotton warp and weft, tight and regular, with a medium pile that has been sheared level; the back photograph shows a straight, well-packed weave with no crowding or bowing along the width. Age reads as semi-antique rather than new: the colors have mellowed, the ivory has gone honeyed, and the wool has the soft luster that only comes from decades of use. If you want to understand what those signs mean before you buy, our guide on how to date an Oriental rug walks through the same details we check on the sales floor.