7' x 10'8" Persian Sarouk Rug | Coral Red Field with Navy Medallion | Excellent Condition

This 7' x 10'8" Persian Sarouk is a room-size city weave built on a coral red ground, hand-knotted in wool over a cotton foundation with a 3/8" pile that still stands upright edge to edge. The drawing follows the classic Sarouk formula: one navy medallion anchored in an otherwise open field, ivory spandrels at the 4 corners, and a wide navy main border of palmettes and curling leaves between light blue and ivory guard stripes. Condition is excellent, with level pile, straight sides and clean original ivory fringe at both ends, as the close detail photographs show. It falls right in the middle of the 7x10 Persian rugs range, and like every piece we sell it ships with a certificate of authenticity recording origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a navy cross-lobed medallion outlined in ivory, filled with a ring of 8 blue rosettes and coral star flowers around a pale blue and cream sunburst cartouche. Above and below it, two navy pendants hang from dotted anchor bars and finish in a coral lotus and a small arrowhead finial, the kind of vertical axis Sarouk weavers use to make an open field read as deliberate rather than empty. Each of the 4 corners carries an ivory spandrel with a small framed flower panel, split palmettes and long serrated leaves in blue and green. The main border runs navy with alternating coral palmettes and ivory curling vines, backed by a light blue vine stripe and an ivory outer guard of repeating navy rosettes.

Color: Coral Red with Navy, Light Blue and Ivory

The field is a coral red with a salmon warmth to it, lighter and friendlier than the brick reds usually associated with central Persian weaving, and it shifts a shade or two as you walk around it because the wool takes light differently with the nap. Against that ground the navy of the medallion and main border reads almost black at the edges, which is exactly what gives the ivory outlines their crispness. Inside the medallion the palette opens up: teal and light blue rosettes, coral and rose flowerheads, soft green leaf tips, and beige to camel petals in the central cartouche. Cream spandrels and an ivory outer guard stripe lift the 4 corners and keep the whole 7' x 10'8" field from reading heavy.

Origin and Weaving Quality

Sarouk is a weaving town in the Arak district of central Persia, in the old Sultanabad region, and it built its reputation on two things: dense, tightly packed knotting and wool with enough body to take decades of traffic without going flat. Persian Sarouk rugs of this type are workshop pieces rather than village work, which is why the medallion here is drawn with a true curved line and the border vines turn smoothly at the corners instead of stepping. The reverse photograph shows the cotton warps and wefts running straight and the knot rows sitting evenly, with no pulled selvage and no crooked wefting. That combination of a heavy wool pile on a sound cotton foundation is why a Sarouk of this age still looks new on the floor.