8'11" x 11'7" Persian Bakhtiar Rug | Brick Red Medallion Field | Ivory Borders, Excellent Condition

This is a solid, honest village piece from the Bakhtiari districts of western Persia, hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation and finished at 8'11" x 11'7", which sits neatly in the 9x12 Persian rug range most living and dining rooms are built around. The drawing is confident rather than fussy: a stepped ivory and navy medallion anchors a brick red inner field, and a deep indigo outer field carries the pattern out to a broad ivory border. The pile is full and even with no bare spots, the sides and ends are intact, and the handle is the dense, slightly stiff feel that good Bakhtiari wool keeps for decades. Every rug we ship leaves with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a layered medallion: a charcoal and navy core filled with salmon palmettes and small olive leaf forms, ringed by an ivory cartouche with serrated edges and capped top and bottom by pointed pendants. Around it the brick red ground is filled with angular vinework, hooked leaves, rosettes and small blossoms drawn in the straight-line village manner, each element outlined so it reads clearly from across the room. Four large corner spandrels in navy repeat the ivory and salmon vocabulary at a larger scale. The main ivory border runs a march of alternating navy palmettes and rust flowerheads joined by a zigzag vine, flanked by narrow guard stripes of rust and dark blue with running rosettes. It is an all-over composition with a strong center, which means the rug reads well both under a dining table and open in a seating area.

Color Palette

Red is the headline, but it is a warm brick and terracotta red rather than a hot one, with a faint natural variation through the field that comes from hand-dyed yarn and gives the ground depth under lamplight. The outer field is a saturated indigo navy that shifts toward a lighter cobalt where the pile catches the light, as seen in the close-up photographs. Ivory does the heavy lifting on contrast: it fills the medallion frame, the main border and the small floral filler, and it is a soft creamy ivory rather than a bright white. Between those three sit the secondary tones, a dusty salmon or coral used for the larger blossoms, a muted olive and sage green in the leaves, pale straw yellow in a few rosettes, and charcoal brown outlining that keeps every motif crisp. The overall effect is red and blue at a distance, far more colorful up close.

Bakhtiari Weaving and Origin

Bakhtiari rugs come from the Chahar Mahal villages southwest of Isfahan, woven in settled towns such as Shahrekord, Saman and Chalshotor by families tied to the Bakhtiari tribal confederation that once migrated across the Zagros mountains. The wool is the reason these rugs last: mountain flocks grazed at altitude produce a high-lanolin fleece that resists soil and keeps its luster through generations of use. Weavers here work on a cotton foundation with a symmetrical Turkish knot beaten down hard, which is why the back is firm and the rug lies flat without relaxing out of shape. Village Bakhtiari work is not meant to be a fine city weave; its value is in durability, clear bold drawing and dyes that mature well, and this example shows all three with full pile and unbroken borders. Among Persian Bakhtiar rugs, a clean medallion piece in this size is the one that gets used daily rather than saved.