7'9" x 10'5" Persian Heriz Rug | Ivory All-Over Geometric Field | Excellent Condition

Most Heriz rugs that reach the market are built around a single large medallion on a brick red ground. This one is the harder piece to find: an ivory ground carried edge to edge with an all-over pattern, with no medallion at all to break it up. At 7'9" x 10'5" it sits in the most useful format in the house, the same footprint buyers shop when they look through 8x10 Persian and Oriental rugs, and the wool has the firm, slightly glassy handle that the Heriz district is known for. The pile stands at 3/8" throughout with clean, straight selvedges and original fringe, and the back shown in the last photograph reads evenly across the whole width. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming it is hand-knotted in Persia.

Design and Motifs

The field is drawn as a repeating lattice of angular palmettes, serrated leaves and hooked vines, each unit mirrored across the long axis so the eye reads vertical columns rather than a center point. Small 8 petal rosettes and star forms fill the gaps between the larger forms, which is what keeps the ivory ground from looking empty at this scale. The weaver worked without a medallion, a choice that puts this piece with the best all-over Persian geometric rugs rather than the familiar centerpiece layout. The main border carries a procession of stepped cartouches and flowering sprays set between narrow guard stripes, and the 4 corners resolve the border turn with the slight improvisation that marks genuine village drawing. Nothing here is mechanically repeated, and the drawing shifts a little from one end of the rug to the other.

Color: Ivory Ground, Red Border, Blue Depth

The ground is a warm undyed ivory, closer to unbleached wool than to white, and it is what makes this piece work in a bright room where a red field would dominate. Over it the weaver placed tomato and brick reds, a deep burgundy that reads almost black in the shaded photographs, and a navy blue used for outlines and the smaller leaf forms. Secondary accents of olive green, soft gold and a faded rose appear in the palmettes and rosettes, and that rose tone also lifts the main border, which is set in a deep red-brown with ivory and blue guard stripes on either side. The overall effect is warm rather than bright, the kind of balance collectors look for in ivory Persian rugs, with color variation across the field that comes from hand-dyed wool rather than from any wear.

Heriz Weaving in the Villages East of Tabriz

Heriz is a cluster of villages east of Tabriz on the slopes below Mount Sabalan, and two things there explain the reputation: mineral-rich water that sets the dyes hard, and local wool that is famously tough, high in lanolin and slow to show traffic. Weavers work from memory on a cotton foundation and draw in straight lines and stepped corners, which is why Heriz pattern is angular where the city looms of nearby Persian Tabriz rugs produce curved vine and fine floral drawing. Village knot counts generally sit under 200 knots per square inch, and that is the point rather than a shortcoming: the heavier knot and the thick wool pile give a rug that takes decades of use in a main room and keeps its structure. This example has been kept in excellent condition, with full pile and sound ends and sides.