7'3" x 9'8" Persian Sarough Rug | Navy Blue All Over Floral Field | 1980s Wool, Perfect Condition

This is the Sarouk formula done properly: a midnight navy field carried edge to edge with detached floral sprays, wrapped in a brick red main border and two cream guard stripes. Woven in the 1980s on a cotton foundation with a 3/8" wool pile, it has come through in perfect condition, with a full even nap and clean hand-tied fringe at both ends. At 7'3" x 9'8" it sits right in the most usable slot in the house, which is why 7x10 Persian rugs move faster than any other size we import. Our Persian Sarough rugs guide walks through how this group is drawn and graded, and every rug leaves us with a certificate of authenticity naming origin, materials and knot construction.

Design and Motifs

There is no central medallion here. The field is filled with individual floral sprays, each one a small bouquet of rosettes, buds and curled serrated leaves, set on the navy ground and arranged in a quiet offset lattice so the eye keeps moving instead of locking onto one point. Look closely at the detail photos and you can read the vocabulary: 8 petal rosettes, palmettes opened flat, tulip and carnation heads, slender vases at the base of several sprays, and long curling saz leaves that give the drawing its swing. The sprays mirror each other across the center line, top to bottom and side to side, which is the discipline that separates a designed all-over from a random scatter. The main border runs a brick red ground with alternating palmettes and rosettes joined by a fine vine, and the 2 cream guard borders repeat a small blossom and leaf meander that ties the corners cleanly at all 4 turns.

A Midnight Navy Field with Red, Cream and Light Blue

The field is a deep navy blue that goes almost ink black in low light and opens up to a saturated indigo in daylight, one of the reasons navy blue Persian rugs are so easy to live with. Against that ground the flowers are drawn in warm mid tones: soft salmon and blush pink, cream and beige, mustard gold, rust red and a chestnut brown that reads nearly aubergine in the shaded photos. A clear light blue runs through the leaf work and the small blossom centers, and it is that light blue, cooler than everything around it, that keeps the palette from turning heavy. The main border shifts the balance completely, trading navy for a soft brick red that has aged into a slightly terracotta tone, with the 2 ivory guard bands acting as a bright frame between border and field. Cotton fringe at both ends finishes pale ivory.

Sarough Weaving in Central Persia

Sarough is a weaving village in the Arak district of central Persia, in the country that also produced the Sultanabad workshop rugs, and its reputation was built on exactly this kind of floral all-over. American buyers took to the type in such numbers in the early 20th century that the drawing is still known in the trade as the American Sarouk pattern, and the 1980s weavers kept to it. The construction is what you pay for: a tight cotton warp and weft, wool knots packed close enough that the back reads crisp and the individual flower outlines stay sharp, and a 3/8" pile of springy local wool that resists crushing under furniture. Feel the corner where the rug is folded back in the photos and the weave is firm rather than floppy, which is the signature of a well beaten Sarough and the reason pieces like this serve 3 or 4 decades and still show full pile, as this one does.