7'7" x 10'8" Persian Heriz Rug | All-Over Geometric Field with Navy Medallion | Excellent Condition

Laid flat, this 7'7" x 10'8" Persian Heriz shows exactly what the looms east of Tabriz do best. The field is a warm brick red, filled edge to edge with angular flowering branches, and it closes around a compact navy medallion with hooked returns at the center. The border is a deep indigo band carrying ivory hexagon cartouches and rosette medallions, framed by a camel vine stripe on both sides. The wool is thick, glossy and hand-knotted on a cotton foundation, and the pile still stands full across the whole surface, with clean selvages and straight sides. Condition is excellent and the rug needs no repair or restoration. It settles neatly into the footprint most buyers shopping 8x11 Persian rugs are working with, and it ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming it was knotted by hand in Persia.

Design and Motifs

The drawing is pure village work, straight lines and stepped diagonals rather than curved vines, which is what separates real Heriz geometric Persian rugs from city workshop pieces. At the center sits a small navy medallion built from 4 hooked palmette lobes around an 8 point ivory star, with a sky blue rosette above and below it on the long axis. Out from there the field runs all over: large serrated leaves, stepped palmettes, ivory hooked branches, small ladder-like blossoms and scattered 8 petal rosettes, all mirrored across both axes so the pattern reads the same from either end of the room. The 4 corners carry heavy angular palmettes in blue, camel and cream rather than open spandrels, which keeps the field busy and forgiving of furniture. The main indigo border alternates ivory elongated hexagons holding blue and gold rosettes with smaller red and camel floral panels, and the outer guard stripe repeats a tiny running vine in camel over brown.

A Closer Look at the Colors

The ground is a brick to tomato red that shifts gently from panel to panel, a light abrash that gives the field depth instead of flat printed color. Against it the border reads almost black at a glance and resolves into a true indigo navy once you get close, the strongest contrast in the rug. Ivory does the outlining work throughout, drawing the hooked branch tips, the border hexagons and the small star at the center of the medallion, and it has mellowed to a soft cream rather than a bright white. The blues are the pleasure here, ranging from a chalky sky blue in the leaves and rosettes to a deeper slate in the border rosettes. Camel and olive gold warm the guard stripes, the leaf stems and several of the larger palmettes, while soft salmon pink appears in small doses on blossoms and leaf tips and keeps the red from turning heavy. Walnut brown and a dark aubergine fill the smallest details. The overall effect is a warm, saturated red rug with plenty of blue and gold to work with in the room.

Heriz Origin and Weaving Quality

Heriz is a cluster of villages east of Tabriz, on the slopes below Mount Sabalan in northwest Persia. The water there is mineral rich, and the local wool it produces is famously tough and high in lanolin, which is why these rugs take a shine as they age and why they survive generations of traffic that would flatten a softer pile. Weavers work from memory and small scale cartoons rather than a full workshop drawing, which is the source of the angular geometry, the honest small asymmetries and the stepped corner resolutions you can see here. Village Heriz weaving usually sits under 200 knots per square inch, and the back photograph shows what you want at that grade: even rows, consistent knot size, a firm handle and no slack or loose areas. Weight, wool quality and clear drawing matter more than knot count in this group, and this piece has all 3. If you want to learn how to date an oriental rug, the dye tones and abrash in a Heriz field like this one are the best place to start.