8'2" x 10'7" Persian Heriz Rug | Brick Red Geometric Medallion | Semi-Antique Village Weave

This 8'2" x 10'7" Heriz shows exactly why the design has never gone out of style: one large stepped medallion, 4 ivory corner spandrels, and a brick red field drawn entirely in straight lines and right angles. The wool is dense and dry to the hand, with the slow color movement across the field that only comes from hand-spun yarn and small dye lots, and the pile has settled in evenly rather than thinned. Image 6 shows the back with a ruler laid across it, so you can count the knot rows yourself and see the tight, even village weave on a cotton foundation. It is a genuine room-size piece that sits in the 8x11 Persian rugs bracket, and it ships with our certificate of authenticity confirming it as hand-knotted in Persia.

Design and Motifs

The field is laid out around a single large diamond medallion on a blue-black ground, stepped and hooked at every edge so the outline reads as a series of small notches rather than a curve. At its heart is a rust and apricot rosette with an ivory and blue center dot, and around that sit 4 ivory shield-shaped cartouches, each filled with its own small hooked blossom. Above and below the medallion a tall arrowhead pendant reaches out toward the field, and the brick red ground on either side is filled with angular serrated leaves, hooked vines and little stepped crosses rather than left plain. The 4 corner spandrels are ivory, drawn with bold hooked scrolls and angular flowerheads that frame the medallion and brighten the whole layout. The main border runs on a blue-black ground with alternating hexagonal medallions and 8 petal rosettes in rose, olive and ivory, held between narrow guard stripes of small blossoms on gold and terracotta. Everything is drawn on the grid, which is the signature of the best geometric Persian rugs, and it is why a Heriz reads as architectural rather than fussy.

A Closer Look at the Color

The field is brick red with real abrash, shifting between a dark oxblood tone near the borders and a warmer terracotta and salmon across the open areas, which is the natural fingerprint of hand-spun wool dyed in small batches. Against that the medallion ground and the main border are a very dark blue-black, almost charcoal where the light falls flat, and that darkness is what makes the ivory read so cleanly: the 4 spandrels and the inner cartouches are a soft cream rather than a bright white. Inside the medallion the drawing is picked out in rust, burnt apricot and a muted mid blue, with small ivory outlines keeping each motif separate. Olive green appears in restrained amounts, in the leaf tips and in a few of the border rosettes, and there are touches of rose pink and pale gold in the guard stripes. The overall effect is warm and settled rather than loud, which makes it one of the easier red and burgundy Persian rugs to live with over wood floors or against neutral walls.

Heriz: The Village Weave of Northwest Persia

Heriz is a group of villages in northwest Persia, east of Tabriz on the slopes below Mount Sabalan. The water there is mineral-rich, and local lore and buyers alike credit it for wool that is unusually tough and lustrous, which is the reason these rugs are known for outlasting generations of furniture. Weavers in the Heriz villages work from memory and from a grid rather than from a fully painted cartoon, so the drawing stays angular: straight lines, stepped corners, hooked outlines. Knot counts in village work are generally modest, and that is by design, because a slightly heavier knot on a strong cotton foundation gives a thick, stable rug that lies flat and takes traffic. This piece has the softened palette, the gentle abrash and the evenly worn-in pile of a semi-antique rather than a new weave, and if you want to understand how those clues are read, our guide on how to date an Oriental rug walks through the same signals we use on the floor.