6' x 8'8" Persian Sarouk Mohajeran Rug | Navy Field with Rust Border | Antique 1930s All Over Floral

This is a genuine antique from the 1930s, a piece that has already lived one long life on a floor in Persia and has plenty left. The field is a deep inky navy, drawn with an all over floral composition rather than a central medallion, and it is framed by a wide salmon rust border that lifts the whole rug and keeps the dark ground from reading heavy. Woven in wool on a cotton foundation, it falls into the useful 6x9 Persian rug footprint, and the collector interest here sits with the finer drawing and tighter weave that mark out antique Persian Sarouk rugs of the Mohajeran type. Every rug we ship carries a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The field is an all over floral design built on mirrored symmetry rather than a medallion. Large lobed palmettes anchor the top and bottom of the center axis, and between them the weaver stacked pairs of finely stippled willow and cypress sprays, curling serrated leaves, small squared rosettes and single blossoms on thin stems, each one drawn separately against the dark ground in the detached spray manner typical of Mohajeran work. Look at the negative space: the motifs float clear of one another instead of fusing into a mass, which is the mark of a cartoon drawn by a hand that knew what it was doing. The main border carries an angular procession of floral heads, boteh-like forms and rigid leaf brackets on rust, and it is fenced on both sides by ivory reciprocal trefoil guard stripes and narrow navy minor bands. The corners are resolved cleanly, with the border pattern turning the angle without collapsing, and a plain kilim finish with ivory fringe closes each end.

Color Palette: Indigo Navy, Rust and Olive Green

The ground is a saturated indigo navy that goes almost black in low light and opens up to a clear blue where the pile catches the sun. Over it the drawing runs in three registers of warm color: a soft apricot gold in the vine work and rosettes, a hotter terracotta rust in the blossoms and palmette hearts, and an olive to sage green in the leaves and leaf brackets that keeps the warm tones from turning orange overall. The wide border is the brightest element, a salmon rust with real depth of tone, outlined in ivory and filled with navy, olive and burnt orange detail. Small lavender and sky blue notes appear in flower centers and in a few of the leaf forms, and ivory is used sparingly, mostly in the guard stripes and in the stippled willow sprays, so it functions as light rather than as a color block. Against a dark wood floor the navy anchors, against a pale floor the rust border frames. Either way the palette is entirely at home with cream upholstery, walnut furniture and brass.

Origin and Weaving Quality: Mohajeran Sarouk

Sarouk is a weaving village in the Arak district of west central Persia, and Mohajeran is the nearby settlement whose weavers produced the best of the group in the first decades of the last century. The difference is real and visible on the back: a tighter, more even knot count on a cotton foundation, a shorter and more tightly packed wool pile, and the fine outlining that only a denser weave can hold. That is why Mohajeran Sarouks are the pieces collectors chase while plainer Sarouks are simply good decorative rugs. The wool of the region is famously hard-wearing, which is how a rug woven in the 1930s arrives with a full even pile and its colors intact. If you want to understand how pieces like this are placed in a period, our guide on how to date an Oriental rug walks through the same evidence we used here: dye behavior, drawing conventions, foundation and back structure.