7'11" x 10'11" Persian Heriz Rug | Red Geometric Medallion | 1980s Excellent Condition

This is the rug most Americans picture when they hear the word Heriz: a deep red field, a stepped navy and aubergine medallion planted dead center, ivory corner pieces, and drawing built entirely from straight lines and angles. Woven by hand in the 1980s in the village belt of northwest Persia, it measures 7'11" x 10'11", which makes it a true room-size piece that sits comfortably under a sofa group or a dining table for 8. The wool pile is full and even across the field, the reds have settled into that mellow madder tone that only comes with a few decades of honest age, and the rug lies flat and ready to use. It falls squarely in the practical range of 8x11 Persian rugs, and it ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming it as a hand-knotted Persian Heriz.

Design and Motifs

The center medallion is an 8 pointed stepped star, outlined in ivory and filled with navy, aubergine and small blue serrated leaves, with a red rosette at its heart and hooked pendants running off the top and bottom axis. Around it the red field is packed with angular vine work, sawtooth palmettes and small animal-like hooks, all of it drawn on the diagonal in the manner typical of geometric Persian rugs from the northwest. The 4 corners carry large ivory spandrels filled with stiff branching stems and blossoms, and the contrast between the pale corners and the red ground is what gives the composition its punch. The wide main border runs a chain of hexagonal rosettes and angular leaf forms on a dark aubergine ground, framed on both sides by narrow ivory and red guard stripes and a fine reciprocal outer edge.

Madder Red, Ivory and Indigo

The field reads as a warm brick red with an underlying madder depth, shifting slightly lighter and darker across the width where the dye lots changed on the loom, a natural movement that gives the surface life under lamplight. Against it sit chalky ivory and soft beige in the spandrels and border rosettes, deep indigo navy in the medallion outlines and border ground, and a mid sky blue that flickers through the leaves and small blossoms. Olive green and warm brown appear in smaller quantities, mostly in the stems and in the filler motifs of the corner pieces, and they keep the palette from reading as pure red and blue. It is a genuinely traditional colorway, which is why these rank among the most requested red Persian rugs for rooms with wood floors and dark furniture.

Heriz Weaving East of Tabriz

Heriz is a group of villages east of Tabriz, on the slopes below Mount Sabalan, where the mineral-rich water is credited with producing wool of exceptional strength and shine. Weavers there work from memory and from village drawings rather than from a full cartoon, which is why the lines stay straight, the corners step rather than curve, and no two Heriz rugs of the same design are ever quite identical. Knotted on a cotton foundation with a heavy wool pile, these are the workhorses of the Persian weaving world, built to take traffic for generations rather than to be admired from a distance. If you want to understand how a piece like this is placed in the 1980s rather than earlier, our guide on how to date an Oriental rug walks through the wear, dye and weave clues that dealers actually use.