7' x 10'2" Persian Heriz Rug | Unusual Ivory Field All-Over Geometric Design | Semi-Antique Village Weave

Most Heriz rugs that come through our hands have a red field and a big central medallion. This one does neither. The field is open ivory from end to end, and the drawing runs as a continuous all-over design rather than a single framed centerpiece, which is the scarcer and harder of the two layouts to draw well at this scale. The wool is a clean 3/8" pile on a cotton foundation, the handle is firm, and the pile has that dry, slightly lustrous feel older Heriz wool takes on once it has settled. At 7' x 10'2" it is one of the most usable proportions in the house, and it ships with our certificate of authenticity confirming it as a hand-knotted Persian rug. If you are comparing proportions, our full range of 7x10 Persian rugs sits alongside this piece.

Design and Motifs

The field is built on a lattice of thin angular vines that break the ivory ground into compartments, each filled with a serrated leaf, an arrowhead palmette or a small 8 petal rosette. Four large hooked cloud band devices anchor the 4 corners of the field, their spiral ends drawn in dark outline so they read almost as architecture against the pale ground. Through the center runs a column of stepped floral forms and paired blue tulip heads, with a single rust rosette at the midpoint standing in for the medallion the weaver chose not to use. Every line is straight or stepped, never curved, which is the village drawing discipline of this group. The navy main border carries alternating diamond cartouches and rosettes, framed on both sides by narrow ivory guard stripes of running flower heads, and the corner resolutions are handled cleanly rather than cut off, a good sign of an experienced loom.

Color: Ivory, Navy and Rust

The ground is a warm ivory that shifts toward oatmeal and cream in different light rather than sitting flat white, which is exactly what you want from a wool field of this age. Against it the palette is wider than the 3 listed colors suggest: brick and tomato rust in the leaves and rosettes, a mid sky blue and a deeper indigo in the tulip heads and palmettes, soft sage and olive green in the smaller leaf tips, and a pale camel or apricot used to lift the lighter flower forms. The main border is a deep navy, nearly black where the wool took the dye hardest, and it does the heavy work of containing all that light. Buyers who are building a room around pale floors or cream walls usually end up on our ivory Persian rugs page, and this is one of the few true ivory ground Heriz pieces we are able to keep in stock.

Heriz: Weaving Town and Quality

Heriz is a cluster of villages east of Tabriz in northwest Persia, sitting below Mount Sabalan. The water there is mineral rich, and the local sheep produce a wool that is famously tough and resilient, which is why Heriz rugs have a reputation for outlasting the houses they were bought for. Weavers in these villages work from memory and from village cartoons rather than from a workshop master's drawing, so the line is angular, the medallions are stepped, and small irregularities in repeat are part of the record of the hand. Village Heriz work typically sits below 200 knots per square inch, and the virtue is structural rather than fine: a heavy wool pile knotted on cotton warps, a flat firm back, and a weave that takes traffic for generations. The back shown against the ruler in the last photograph tells you the rest, an even hand-knotted grid with the knots clearly visible and the original ivory fringe intact.