7'6" x 10'10" Persian Ardebil Rug | Allover Herati Fish Design | Ivory Medallion, Navy Border

This is a tightly drawn Ardebil from northwest Persia, hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation with a short 3/8" pile that lets every small motif read cleanly. The field is a continuous Herati lattice in brick red, interrupted only by a single ivory hexagonal medallion and matching ivory corner spandrels, and the whole composition is held inside a deep navy palmette border. At 7'6" x 10'10" it covers a standard seating group without crowding the walls, and it sits comfortably in the family of 8x11 Persian rugs that buyers shop most often. The rug is in excellent, never used condition and ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The field carries the Herati pattern, also called mahi or fish: a small rosette set inside a diamond, with 4 curved lanceolate leaves turning outward at the corners of each diamond like fish circling a pool. That unit repeats across the entire ground in strict rows, hundreds of times, and the discipline of keeping it square over 10'10" of length is the real test of the weaver. The ivory medallion at center is stepped and hexagonal, outlined in a narrow navy line and filled with its own smaller version of the same floral vocabulary, including a pair of flanking pendants at top and bottom. The 4 corner spandrels in ivory repeat the medallion drawing in quarter form, each one anchored by a large curling leaf. The main border runs alternating rosettes and cartouche-like palmettes on navy, framed inside and out by reciprocal sawtooth guard stripes and a fine barber-pole minor stripe, with a squared meander line separating the border system from the field.

Color Palette

The ground reads as a warm brick red leaning toward coral where the light hits the pile, and it is not a flat color: the wool takes the madder tone unevenly enough to give the field quiet movement across its width. Against that ground the weaver worked in red brown for the heavier leaf outlines, ivory for the rosettes, the medallion and the spandrels, and a soft slate to powder blue for the alternating fish leaves, which is what keeps the allover lattice from reading as a solid red mass. The main border is a deep inky navy, nearly black in the corners of the photographs, with its palmettes picked out in ivory, rose and small touches of green. Guard stripes carry ivory and a muted violet blue. The overall effect is a classic red and navy Persian palette with enough ivory to lift it, and it works with dark wood, cream upholstery and warm metals.

Origin and Weaving Quality

Ardebil sits in the far northwest of Persia, high country near the Caspian slope, and its workshops built their reputation on tightly controlled geometric and Herati drawing rather than on curvilinear court patterns. The mahi field, the stepped hexagonal medallion and the reciprocal guard stripes here all belong to the same northwest weaving tradition that produced the best Persian Bijar rugs, and this piece is drawn with that kind of rigor: the lattice stays true from selvage to selvage and the border corners resolve cleanly instead of being cut short. The wool is the tough, high-luster highland fleece the region is known for, cut to a short 3/8" pile that packs down hard underfoot and takes traffic without matting. The cotton foundation keeps the rug flat and square, the sides and ends are original and sound, and the pile shows no wear anywhere across the field.