8'2" x 10'2" Persian Heriz Rug | Stepped Geometric Medallion | Red and Ivory Village Weave

This is the Heriz that people picture when they think of a Persian room rug: a deep red field, a big stepped medallion holding the center, and ivory corners that push the drawing outward. At 8'2" x 10'2" it sits squarely in the most useful of all room sizes, which makes it one of the easier 8x10 Persian rugs to place under a sofa group or a six seat table. The pile is a full 3/8" of hand-spun wool on a cotton foundation, the handle is heavy and firm, and the surface shows even wear with no thin areas, no repairs and no color runs. Every rug we ship carries a certificate of authenticity confirming it is hand-knotted in Persia.

Design and Motifs

The center holds an 8 petal rosette in olive and camel, ringed by a sky blue floret and set inside a stepped, hooked medallion that reads almost like a star when you stand at the short end. Long serrated leaves and anchor shaped pendants run off the medallion toward each end, and the red field between them is packed with angular palmettes, small hooked vines and tiny blossoms drawn in straight lines rather than curves, which is exactly how the villages around Heriz draw. The 4 corners carry ivory spandrels filled with the same vocabulary in reverse contrast, so the eye reads the pattern twice. A navy main border of alternating rosettes and turtle palmettes frames the whole field, flanked by narrow reciprocal guard stripes in ivory and red. Collectors of geometric Persian rugs look for this balance of a bold, legible medallion over a busy but disciplined field.

A Madder Red Field With Ivory Corners and Deep Navy Drawing

The field is a warm madder red that leans brick in daylight and toward terracotta under lamps, with the gentle tonal movement across the width that only comes from hand-dyed, hand-spun yarn. Against it the ivory spandrels read clean and slightly creamy rather than stark white, and the navy of the medallion outline and main border is deep enough to look near black where the pile lies flat. Between those three anchors the weavers worked a full secondary palette: a clear sky blue in the leaf tips and small rosettes, olive and moss green in the central petals, soft rose and salmon in the blossoms, camel and khaki in the vine work, and small touches of chocolate brown. Nothing is harsh, and every accent color repeats at least 4 times across the field, which is what keeps a rug this busy feeling calm on the floor.

Woven in the Heriz Villages of Northwest Persia

Heriz is a group of villages east of Tabriz, on the slopes below Mount Sabalan, where the mineral-rich water and the local pasture produce wool with an unusually high lanolin content. That wool is what makes these rugs famous: it is springy, it takes dye beautifully, and it resists abrasion for generations under real traffic. Weavers here work from memory on a heavy double-wefted cotton foundation, knotting large and beating the rows down hard, so the drawing has to be angular. Straight lines, stepped corners and blocky palmettes are not a simplification of city work, they are the grammar of the region. Village Heriz weaving typically sits under 200 knots per square inch, and the strength of a piece is judged on the confidence of the medallion, the clarity of the spandrels and the quality of the wool rather than on fineness. On all 3 counts this one holds up, and the back shown with the ruler tells you the rest: tight, even rows with plenty of pile still standing.