7'3" x 10'3" Persian Sarough Rug | All Over Floral Spray Design | 1980s Red Field, Ivory Border

This is the classic room-size Sarough as the trade has known it for a century: a red ground covered edge to edge in small floral sprays, framed by a wide ivory border full of roses and palmettes. Woven in the 1980's with a cotton foundation and a dense 3/8" wool pile, it has the weight and the firm handle you expect from Persian Sarough rugs, and the pile is still full and even across the whole field. At 7'3" x 10'3" it sits squarely in the most useful proportion we sell, which is why we keep a dedicated group of 7x10 Persian rugs for buyers working around a sofa pair or a standard dining set. Every rug we ship leaves Freeport with a certificate of authenticity recording origin, age, materials and measurements.

Design and Motifs

The field is a true all over floral layout rather than a medallion composition: detached sprays, small flowering plants, curled leaves and single blossoms repeat in offset rows so the eye never locks onto one center. Look closely and the drawing is strictly mirrored across both axes, with one slightly larger 8 petal rosette cluster sitting at the exact middle of the rug, so it reads as a quiet focal point without being a formal medallion. Serrated acanthus leaves, tulip heads and tiny vases fill the ground between sprays, and the drawing stays curvilinear throughout, a workshop habit rather than village angularity. The frame runs five bands deep: a plain red outer edge, a blue guard stripe of small blossoms, the wide ivory main border carrying alternating rose bouquets and navy palmettes on a scrolling vine, a second blue guard, and a narrow reciprocal inner stripe that separates border from field. The corners resolve cleanly, with the vine turning rather than breaking, which is the detail that separates a drawn border from a copied one.

A Deep Red Field With Ivory and Blue Drawing

The ground is a saturated tomato red that shifts with the light, cooling to a rose or salmon cast in open daylight and sinking toward brick under lamps, which is the natural behavior of a madder-family red on lustrous wool. Against it the florals are built from cream and warm ivory, two distinct blues (a mid cerulean in the blossom heads and guard stripes, and a near-black indigo used for outlining and leaf tips), and a camel gold that carries the stems and smaller petals. Soft salmon pink appears only in the border roses, where it lightens what would otherwise be a heavy ivory band, and touches of brown and black do the fine outlining that keeps each spray legible against the red. Beige fills the border ground. The overall effect is a warm, traditional palette: red and ivory doing the heavy lifting, blue supplying the contrast, gold and pink keeping it from feeling severe. There is a faint, even abrash across the upper field, visible in the overhead shots as a gentle lightening of the red, which is handspun wool and natural dye behaving as they should.

Sarough Weaving in Central Persia

Sarough is a weaving town in the Markazi region of central Persia, north of Arak, and its looms built their reputation on exactly this formula: heavy, firmly packed wool pile on a cotton foundation, a red ground, and a dense all over floral repeat drawn to a cartoon rather than from memory. The weave is tight enough to hold the small sprays cleanly, and the beat-down is what gives a Sarough its characteristic heft, a rug that lies flat immediately and does not ripple under furniture. Wool from the region is springy and takes dye deeply, which is why the red here still reads strong after four decades. The back shows an even, regular knot line with no runs or corrections, the ends and sides are original, and the 3/8" pile is unworn from corner to corner. For a buyer who wants a traditional Persian floral in a size that actually fits a real room, this is the type of rug that earned Sarough its name in the American market.