7'2" x 10'5" Persian Sarough Rug | Ivory All Over Floral Field | Rose Red Border | Excellent Condition

An ivory ground Sarough in a classic room size, this 7'2" x 10'5" piece is the kind of floral Persian rug that holds a formal space together without shouting. The field is open cream wool scattered with detached floral sprays and small bouquets, drawn in navy, rose, teal and soft brown, with a single rosette resting dead center. A broad rose red main border carries large palmettes and leaf scrolls, framed by slate blue guard stripes on both sides. The wool is dense, the 3/8" pile still stands up square, and the handle is firm the way a good Persian Sarough rug should be. It is in excellent condition with full pile and clean, even selvages, and it ships with a certificate of authenticity from our Freeport showroom. If you are shopping the 7x10 Persian rugs range, this one sits comfortably at the fine end of it.

Design and Motifs

The drawing is the detached spray layout that made Sarough famous in American homes: dozens of individual bouquets, curled leaves and rounded flower clusters floating free on an open ground rather than being tied into one continuous lattice. Look closely and you can see the discipline behind the apparent scatter, since the sprays mirror each other across both the long and short axes and build a soft diamond rhythm around the small 8 petal rosette at the center. That rosette is the only true medallion element, no more than 18 inches across, surrounded by its own ring of rose and navy blossoms. The main border runs large serrated palmettes alternating with ivory lanceolate leaves, and the narrow reciprocal stripes between borders are drawn with tiny rosettes and buds, a detail you only get when the weaver has knots to spare. All 4 corners resolve cleanly, which on an all over floral Persian rug this busy is the real test of the cartoon and the weaver.

A Closer Look at the Color

The field is an undyed looking cream ivory with a light honey cast, the kind of ground that reads almost white under daylight and warms to parchment under lamps. Against it the palette is built on two reds: a cooler rose madder in the border field and a brighter salmon pink used for small blossoms and highlights inside the sprays. Navy does the structural work, outlining leaves and filling the darkest flower heads, while a lighter slate teal appears in the guard stripes and in scattered petals, giving the whole rug a blue cooling note that keeps the reds from going sweet. Walnut and chestnut browns run through the stems and some palmette centers, and small touches of olive green and pale celadon show up in the leaf tips. There is no harsh contrast anywhere, no synthetic looking color, and the tones carry evenly from end to end. For buyers working with warm wood floors or cream walls this sits in the same family as the rest of our ivory Persian rugs, but with more rose in it than most.

Sarough Weaving in Central Persia

Sarough is a weaving town north of Arak in central Persia, in the same district that produced Mahal and Sultanabad work, and for a century its output has been the benchmark for durable formal floral rugs. Sarough weavers use a cotton foundation beaten tight and a short, very dense wool pile, which is why these rugs feel heavy for their size and why pile depth of only 3/8" still wears for generations. The wool from the region is springy and takes dye deeply, so the rose and navy stay saturated instead of going chalky. This piece shows the better grade of that tradition: fine, regular knotting visible on the back, straight sides, and spray drawing precise enough that individual flower heads stay legible at arm's length. Among authentic Persian rugs it is one of the most practical choices for a room that gets daily use, because Sarough construction was built for exactly that.