7'5" x 11'3" Persian Lilihan Rug | Navy Floral Medallion on Red | 1980s Semi-Antique Wool

This is a village-woven Lilihan from the 1980s, hand-knotted in heavy wool on a cotton foundation, and it still carries a full, even pile across all 89 inches of width. The drawing is the confident, large-scale floral work that the Lilihan weavers are known for: a single lobed navy medallion set low and central on a deep red field, flanked palmettes and vase sprays above and below it, and three framing borders that build outward in camel, red and navy. At 7'5" x 11'3" it covers a standard living or dining room with the pattern reading clearly from a seated height rather than disappearing under furniture. Every rug we ship leaves our Freeport warehouse with a certificate of authenticity recording origin, age, materials and size.

Design and Motifs

The center holds an 8 petal rosette in salmon and ivory, each petal filled with a small blossom and a turquoise dot, ringed by a serrated camel and olive outline that steps out into a broad lobed navy cartouche. Inside that navy ground sit mirrored sprays of pink leafwork and curled acanthus, so the medallion reads as a garden set into dark glass rather than a flat shape. Above and below the medallion the red field carries paired palmettes, flowering vases on tiny plinths, and the ladder-like serrated leaf forms typical of the Lilihan vocabulary, with navy accents dropped in to keep the open red from going quiet. The 4 corners are filled with large leaf and blossom spandrels. The border system runs three bands deep: an inner red stripe of checkerboard cartouches, a wide navy main border carrying big full-face roses and rosettes, and an outer camel band of linked blossoms, closed with a reciprocal trefoil edge and ivory fringe.

A Deep Red Field with Navy, Camel and Salmon

The field is a true madder-leaning red, warm rather than orange, with the softened, slightly rosy surface that only comes with decades of light on good wool. Against it the medallion and main border go to a navy so deep it reads nearly black until light hits the pile and the blue shows through. Between those two poles the palette does the real work: salmon pink and blush in the petals and roses, a dry olive green and camel gold in the serrated medallion outline and the outer border, chocolate brown in the leaf shading, and clean ivory in the small cartouches and the fringe. Small hits of turquoise and teal appear throughout, in flower centers and in the stray leaf tips, and they are what lift the whole thing out of the standard red and navy formula. If this palette is what you are shopping for, the full range of red and burgundy Persian rugs is worth comparing side by side.

Lilihan Weaving and the Sarouk Tradition

Lilihan is a weaving village in the Malayer district of west-central Persia, south of Hamedan and close to the Arak looms, and its rugs have always been sold alongside Persian Sarough rugs because the two share a design language: curved floral drawing, a bold single medallion, and borders built from oversized roses. What separates Lilihan is the handling. The pile is cut a touch longer, the wool is dense and springy, and the drawing is simplified into broader shapes that hold up at village knot counts instead of chasing workshop fineness. That is why these rugs wear so well under furniture and foot traffic, and why this one still shows level pile from end to end after 40 years. Our Persian Sarough rugs guide walks through how the Arak-area weaves are graded, and the back shots here show exactly what you want to see in one: tight, regular knotting on cotton, with the pattern legible from the reverse.