7'2" x 10' Persian Sarough Rug | Navy Blue Field with All-Over Floral Sprays | Excellent Condition

A deep indigo field is unusual in this weaving group, and it is what makes this piece worth stopping for. This Persian Sarough rug measures 7'2" x 10', a true room size that sits squarely in the most useful of all proportions, and it is the sort of piece buyers come looking for when they shop 7x10 Persian rugs. The handle is substantial, with a thick wool pile on a cotton foundation, and the back shown in the photographs is even and tight from selvage to selvage. Condition is excellent, with full pile, straight sides and original wool ends. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity listing origin, materials and measurements.

Design and Motifs

The field is drawn as a soft all-over composition rather than a hard medallion layout. At the center sits a lozenge built from curling feathery leaves and ivory outlines, closing on a small rosette at its core, with 4 scrolling tendrils thrown out toward the corners. Directly above and below it are pendant cartouches enclosing clusters of pink and rose blossoms, and each of those is cradled by a crescent spray of teal and sea green buds, roughly 20 to a sweep, that curl like laurel. Along both long sides run vertical columns of flat pink rosettes on slender brown vines, each column rising from a small flowering vase at the base. The main border on a salmon rose ground alternates navy palmettes with olive and teal serrated leaves and ivory rosettes, framed inside and out by sawtooth guard stripes and a narrow rosette vine, so the eye is carried around the rug without ever losing the open navy center.

A Navy Blue Field Against Salmon Rose

The ground is a saturated indigo navy that reads almost black in the low angle photograph and opens up to a clear blue when the light falls across the pile, the usual behavior of a well dyed wool at depth and one of the reasons navy blue Persian rugs sit so easily with dark wood and warm plaster walls. Against it, the drawing is carried in salmon rose and a lighter coral pink, with ivory and cream outlining almost every leaf and bud so the pattern stays legible on the dark ground. The buds in the crescent sprays are a cool teal to sea green, the vines a soft olive and walnut brown, and the blossom centers pick up small touches of gold and rust. The border repeats the same salmon rose at full strength, which lifts the whole piece and keeps a dark field rug from feeling heavy. Colors photograph slightly cooler than they appear in the hand.

Sarough Weaving in the Arak District

Sarough weaving comes from the villages of the Arak district in west central Persia, the same plateau that produced the old Sultanabad and Mahal workshop pieces, and the group is known for one thing above all: it is built to be walked on. The weavers knot a heavy wool pile over a cotton foundation and beat each row down hard, which gives the rug the stiff, board-like back visible in the reverse photograph and the squared, dependable shape it holds on the floor. The curvilinear floral vocabulary here, the vases, the rosette columns and the leafy sprays, is the classic Sarouk drawing, and in a navy ground rather than the expected rose field it becomes far less common. Pieces of this weave have a reputation for lasting through generations of family use, which is exactly why they turn up again and again in estates a lifetime after they were bought.