7' x 8'5" Persian Bijar Rug | Royal Blue Herati Fish Pattern | Dense Wool Weave, Perfect Condition

At 7' x 8'5" this Bijar sits in that useful squarish proportion that so many rooms actually need and so few handmade rugs come in, only 17 inches longer than it is wide. It is a modern weave from the 2000's in perfect condition, hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation, and it has the weight and board-flat handle that tells you immediately which town it came from. Pick up a corner and it does not flop; it behaves like a plank. The field carries an uninterrupted all over Herati pattern with no central medallion, so it can be turned, centered off-axis, or half tucked under a table without breaking the composition. Every rug ships with a certificate of authenticity documenting origin, materials and construction.

Design and Motifs

The field is pure Herati, known in Persia as mahi, the fish pattern: a small diamond lattice, a rosette at the center of each diamond, and 4 curved sickle leaves arching around it like fish circling a pond. The repeat here is tight and small in scale, which is exactly what separates a serious Bijar from a coarse one, because the drawing only stays legible at that scale if the knot count supports it. Between the diamonds sit tiny 8 petal rosettes and stepped cruciform motifs picked out in ivory, so the lattice reads as a shimmering grid rather than flat wallpaper. The main border is a broad ivory band of curling turtle palmettes and open roses on a vine, flanked by deep burgundy guard stripes and 2 narrow turquoise bands of running vine that frame the whole piece. Corners are resolved cleanly, the border meets at each of the 4 corners without the drawing collapsing, and the ends finish in plain ivory fringe over a tight selvedge.

A Royal Blue Ground Read Through Rose and Copper

The ground color is royal blue, close to navy in the shadows, but very little of it is left bare. The Herati drawing sits on top of it in dense salmon rose, copper, terracotta and old pink, so from standing height the field reads as a warm dusty rose shot through with dark blue, and only when you crouch down does the blue reassert itself as the true ground. Ivory does the outlining work: hairline ivory stems and rosette petals give the lattice its sparkle and keep the whole surface from going muddy. The green in this rug shows up as turquoise, used sparingly in the narrow vine bands and in tiny leaf accents scattered through the border roses, and that cool note is what makes the reds look clean rather than heavy. Red appears twice, as the clear rose red of the border flowers and as the darker burgundy of the guard stripes. The overall effect is a rug that leans warm in daylight and deep blue under lamplight.

Bijar, the Iron Rug of Persia

Bijar is a Kurdish town in the mountains of western Persia, and its weavers work differently from almost everyone else. The wefts are beaten down with a heavy metal comb, strike after strike, wetting the weave as they go, until the knots are compressed to the point where the finished rug is stiff, dense and close to indestructible. That is why the trade has called Bijar the iron rug of Persia for well over a century. A piece like this will hold up under dining chairs and traffic for generations, and it wears slowly and evenly rather than going thin in patches. If you want the full background on the construction, our complete guide to Bijar rugs covers how they are woven and why they last, and if you are comparing weaving districts, the breakdown of Bijar versus Bijar Zanjan, Tekab and Bukan explains what changes from village to village. This one is a town-quality weave with the fine small-scale Herati that the better Bijar workshops reserve for their own commissions.