7'9" x 11'3" Persian Heriz Rug | Tribal Geometric Medallion | Vintage 1980s Wool

This 7'9" x 11'3" Persian Heriz was knotted in the 1980s and it shows everything people buy the type for: a thick, springy wool pile, drawing built entirely from straight lines and stepped edges, and a brick red field that has settled into a deep, even tone with age. The proportions sit right in the most usable band of 8x11 Persian rugs, large enough to carry a full seating group yet still workable under a dining table for 6. The close-up photographs show a clean, dense back and a pile with plenty of life left in it, and the rug is in excellent condition throughout. It ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming it as a hand-knotted Persian village weave.

Design and Motifs

A stepped ivory medallion sits dead center, its serrated outline drawn in navy and outlined again in olive, with a small blushed rosette at the heart and 4 curling leaf forms pushing out to the sides. Above and below it, 2 tall pendant cartouches in ivory anchor the long axis, and a broad diamond frame in outlined steps encloses the whole center field. The 4 corner spandrels are ivory, filled with angular palmettes, hooked vines and small animal and bird forms that give the rug its tribal character. Between them the red ground is crowded with detached blossoms, stepped leaves, rams-horn hooks and tiny latch hooks, the vocabulary that separates village work from the curved drawing of city looms. The main border runs on near black with linked rosettes and reciprocal flowerheads, flanked by narrow guard stripes of stacked squares in blue, gold and rose. Buyers who like this kind of honest, angular drawing tend to browse the wider range of geometric Persian rugs as well.

The Brick Red, Ivory and Indigo Palette

The field is a warm brick red that leans toward terracotta in daylight and toward a deeper oxblood in lamplight, and it carries a gentle natural variation across the width rather than a flat printed tone. Against it the ivory reads as a soft cream, slightly buttered rather than stark white, which keeps the medallion and the 4 spandrels from jumping out too hard. Blues do the structural work: a mid indigo in the stepped outlines and the small square guard stripes, with lighter periwinkle touches in the vine work and the border rosettes. The main border and many of the internal outlines are a near black brown that sharpens every silhouette. Scattered through the field are olive greens in the leaf forms, a warm camel gold in the border boxes, and small pale rose accents in the blossoms, visible clearly in the corner close-up. It is a palette that reads confidently red from across a room but shows 6 or 7 distinct colors once you stand over it.

Heriz Weaving and Village Origin

Heriz is a cluster of weaving villages east of Tabriz in northwest Persia, sitting below Mount Sabalan. The mineral-rich water there is credited with the famously tough, high-luster wool that makes these rugs the workhorses of the Persian world, and the weavers work from memory and simple graph patterns rather than a painted cartoon, which is why the medallion is rendered in steps and angles instead of curves. Knot counts in village Heriz work are normally modest, and that is by design: a heavier knot on a strong cotton foundation gives a thick, dense fabric that takes decades of foot traffic without thinning. The back of this piece, shown in the fold photograph, is tight and regular with an even ribbing, and the selvages and both end finishes are intact. Collectors of tribal and village Persian rugs value pieces from the 1980s precisely because the wool and the dye discipline of that period held up, and this rug is a clean, unrestored example of it.