8'2" x 10'3" Persian Ardebil Rug | Ivory Field Stepped Medallion | 1980s Wool

This 8'2" x 10'3" Persian Ardebil rug was woven in the 1980s and has been kept in perfect shape since, with a full, even wool pile, tight selvages and clean ivory fringe at both ends. The drawing is classic northwest Persia: a stepped salmon and brown medallion anchored on an open champagne ivory field, framed by deep chocolate corner spandrels that square off the composition and make the field look wider than it is. It sits in the standard 8x10 Persian rugs bracket, so it fits a seating group or a 6 seat table without crowding the walls, and it ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The center is a stepped salmon medallion holding a dark brown square panel, and inside that sits an 8 petal rosette ringed by rust and sage points, with small flame leaves reaching into the 4 corners of the panel. Pendant finials drop from the top and bottom of the medallion into the ivory ground, where an angular vine carries serrated palmettes, saw-edge leaves and small cypress forms toward the spandrels. Every line here is drawn straight or stepped rather than curved, which is what separates geometric Persian rugs of this family from the curvilinear city workshops. The salmon main border runs a steady alternation of shield palmettes, rosette clusters and leafy vine, with narrow sage and ivory guard stripes on either side keeping the whole frame crisp.

Ivory, Salmon and Chocolate Brown

The field is a warm champagne ivory with a faint golden cast where the light catches the pile, and it is left genuinely open, which is why the medallion reads so cleanly from across a room. The medallion and the wide border share the same dusty pink salmon, a soft rose that has mellowed with age rather than faded. Against that, the spandrels and the medallion core are a deep chocolate brown, almost aubergine in the shadowed photographs, and they do the heavy lifting on contrast. Accents fill in the rest: rust orange in the rosette petals and the small blossoms, muted blue-green and sage in the leaves and guard stripes, and fine cream outlining that separates each motif from its neighbor. It is a warm, low-glare palette that sits comfortably with oak floors, walnut furniture and cream or clay colored walls.

Ardebil and the Northwest Persian Weaving Tradition

Ardebil sits on a cold high plateau in the far northwest of Persia, and the sheep raised on that pasture grow a springy, high-lanolin fleece that takes dye well and wears for decades. Weavers there work on a cotton foundation with a firm beat, producing rugs that lie flat, hold their shape and keep their pile under real household traffic. The design vocabulary of the town runs parallel to the workshops around Tabriz, so pieces like this are usually shelved with Persian Tabriz rugs in the trade, but the stepped drawing and the confident use of an open field are pure Ardebil. The back, visible in the last photograph, shows the knot rows lined up evenly across the width with the pattern reading as sharply from behind as it does from the face, which is the honest test of a well woven Persian rug.