7'10" x 10'3" Persian Heriz Rug | Semi-Antique Geometric Medallion | Brick Red, Navy & Olive Wool

This is a village Heriz of the kind collectors keep looking for: a brick red field, a navy stepped medallion drawn in straight lines, and wool that has aged into a soft, slightly uneven glow rather than a flat factory color. At 7'10" x 10'3" it sits squarely in the most useful room size in the house, which is why 8x10 Persian rugs in this drawing are so hard to hold onto. The pile is full and even across the whole field, the sides and ends are original, and the cotton fringe is sound. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming it is hand-knotted in Persia.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a stepped, many-sided medallion with paired blue palmettes inside it and a small 8 petal rosette at the core. Long serrated leaves and hooked pendants run out from the medallion toward the top and bottom, and the 4 corners carry matching angular spandrels so the composition reads as a medallion and an all-over field at the same time. Between them the ground is packed with latch-hook rosettes, arrow-shaped leaves, little stepped tiles and vine scrolls, all drawn with the straight lines and right angles that mark true village work rather than a curvilinear city cartoon. The main border is a navy band of alternating rosettes and turtle-style palmettes, framed by ivory guard stripes carrying a small running vine. These are the drawings that make geometric Persian rugs read so well under furniture.

Color: Brick Red, Navy and Olive Green

The field is a warm brick red, closer to terracotta than to a hot crimson, and it moves gently across the width the way hand-spun, hand-dyed wool always does. Against it the border and the medallion outlines are a deep inky navy that grounds the whole piece. The secondary palette is where this rug earns its character: olive and sage green in the leaves and border rosettes, a clear sky blue in the palmettes and hooked motifs, ivory in the guard stripes and outlines, and small touches of salmon pink and soft brown scattered through the field. Seen from across the room it reads as red and navy; up close, as in the pile detail photographs, it is genuinely multi-colored, which is what lets it sit with both antique wood and modern upholstery.

Origin and Weaving Quality

Heriz is a cluster of villages east of Tabriz, on the slopes below Mount Sabalan in northwest Persia. The water there is mineral rich and the local sheep grow a famously tough, high-luster fleece, which is the real reason these rugs outlive their owners. Weavers work from memory on a cotton foundation, knotting the design in straight lines and stepped corners rather than from a full cartoon, and they beat the wefts down hard, giving a heavy, flat-lying handle. Village Heriz weaving usually sits under 200 knots per square inch, and the coarser grid is a feature, not a shortcut: it is what produces the bold scale and the strength that makes this a rug you can put in the busiest part of the house. The patina in the wool, the softened reds and the slight color movement all point to a rug with some age on it, and if you want to understand how those signs are read, our guide on how to date an Oriental rug walks through them.