8'10" x 13'2" Persian Saraband Rug | Signed Mir Boteh All-Over Design | Ivory Field

This is the Mir Saraband pattern as it is supposed to look: a quiet ivory ground covered edge to edge in small boteh, framed by a band of narrow borders that get busier the further out you go. At 8'10" x 13'2" it is a true room-size piece, hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation, with a woven cartouche set into the top border that marks it as a signed weaving rather than an anonymous commercial run. The pile is even and tight, the sides and ends are sound, and the condition is excellent. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming it is a genuine hand-knotted Persian rug, with its origin, materials and measurements recorded.

Design and Motifs

The field is a strict diagonal lattice of boteh, the little hooked pear or almond figure that the West calls paisley, each one drawn in red and dark brown with a single blue dot at its base and a soft taupe body. They tilt in alternating directions row by row, which is what gives a Saraband field its gentle shimmer when you walk past it. There is no medallion and no open ground anywhere, so this is a textbook all-over boteh design that reads almost as a textile rather than a picture. The border system does the heavy lifting: an ivory main band carrying a procession of larger boteh and angular vine, flanked by red and blue reciprocal stripes, barber-pole minor guards and a fine run of 4 petal rosettes. The signature cartouche sits centered in the upper main border, an ivory oval outlined in dark brown and filled with woven script, the small personal mark of the weaver or workshop.

Ivory, Red and Blue Up Close

The ground is a warm undyed ivory, closer to oatmeal than white, and because the boteh are so small and so densely packed the whole field settles into a soft greige tone from standing height. Step closer and the individual colors separate out: brick red outlines, charcoal brown centers, a mineral taupe fill and tiny flicks of sky blue. The borders are where the saturation lives, with a deep brick red main band, navy and sky blue minor stripes and a rose pink guard line that keeps the red from going heavy. Blues sit on both sides of the red, cool against warm, which is the balance that lets an ivory Persian rug like this work over wood, stone or pale carpet without fighting the furniture.

Saraband Weaving and the Mir Tradition

Saraband is a district of villages in central Persia, in the weaving belt around Arak that also produced the city workshop pieces collectors know as Persian Sarough rugs. The best Saraband weavings have always been called Mir, after the boteh repeat the district made its own, and the name still signals the careful version of the pattern: small motifs, consistent spacing across 13 feet of length, borders that stay true at all 4 corners. The weave here is a tight village knot on a cotton warp and weft with a clipped wool pile, the kind of construction that takes decades of traffic and keeps its drawing. Hold the back against the ruler and you can see how regular the rows are, which is exactly why a rug like this holds a straight line from end to end instead of waving.