7'5" x 10'9" Persian Heriz Rug | All-Over Floral Field | Semi-Antique, Excellent Condition

This one takes the hard-wearing village weave of the Heriz district and puts it behind a fully floral drawing instead of the stepped medallion most buyers picture. The brick red field is worked as a mirrored all-over floral design, palmettes, curling leaves and small flower heads running from end to end with no central medallion to anchor them, and the wool has picked up the low satin sheen that only arrives with age and honest use. It is a semi-antique piece in excellent condition, full in the pile, flat on the floor, with straight sides and tight selvages as shown in the close photographs. At 7'5" x 10'9" it sits squarely in the 8 x 11 Persian rugs bracket, large enough to carry a sofa and two chairs with their front legs on the wool. It ships with our certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The field is built on a strong vertical axis, each half mirroring the other across the middle. At the center sits a single sky blue lotus rosette with a green and rose heart, framed by butter yellow and ivory flower heads and set between two slim green stems studded with tiny white dots. Around that, large pink and walnut brown palmettes open out of forked leaves, ivory serrated saz leaves sweep through the ground like blades, and sky blue cloudband leaves curl back on themselves at the top and bottom of every repeat. Small pinwheel rosettes in green, gold and cream fill the gaps so almost no red is left bare. The navy main border alternates ivory, green and rose diamond cartouches with upright floral sprays, and it is held between two ivory guard stripes carrying a running vine of little blossoms, with a final thin red stripe at the outer edge. It is a busy, confident piece of village drawing that repays looking at closely, exactly the kind of field that hides everyday traffic.

Brick Red, Navy and Ivory: The Color Story

The ground is a warm brick red leaning toward terracotta, with a faint abrash that lightens and deepens in bands across the width, the signature of hand-dyed wool worked in small batches. Against it the main border reads as a near-black navy, which pushes the field forward and gives the rug its weight on a pale floor, while two ivory guard stripes draw a clean chalk line between the two. The accent palette is broad for a village weave: sky blue in the leaves and the central rosette, rose and salmon pink in the palmettes, olive and deeper emerald green in the stems and cartouches, butter yellow and cream in the small blossoms, and walnut brown shading the larger flower heads. The floor photographs show the truer tone of the field, a touch brighter than the flat studio view. Anyone shopping red and burgundy Persian rugs for a room with cream walls and wood floors will find this one of the easier reds to live with, because the ivory and blue keep it from going heavy.

Woven in the Heriz District of Northwest Persia

Heriz is a group of weaving villages east of Tabriz, on the slopes below Mount Sabalan, and its reputation rests on two things: mineral-rich water that sets dye beautifully and local wool so tough that Heriz rugs are the ones dealers put in front doors and dining rooms without a second thought. The weave here is the district standard, a symmetric knot on a cotton foundation, beaten down firmly so the rug lies flat and holds its shape without padding to prop it up. No knot count is recorded for this piece, and village Heriz work generally sits below 200 knots per square inch, but the drawing is noticeably finer than the district average, which is why the curved palmettes and thin vine stems hold their line instead of stepping into angles. The back, shown against the ruler, is even and tight from selvage to selvage, and the pile still stands full after decades of service, which is the part that matters most in a rug you intend to actually walk on.