8'2" x 11'6" Persian Bakhtiari Rug | Ivory All Over Floral Lattice | 1980s Semi-Antique

This is a 1980s Persian Bakhtiari measuring 8'2" x 11'6", hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation and carrying a short 3/8" pile that has worn evenly across forty years. The field is ivory rather than the deep madder most buyers expect from this group, and the drawing is an all over floral design rather than the garden panel layout, which makes it a far more flexible rug under furniture. At this 8x11 Persian rug footprint it settles under a standard sofa grouping or a 6 to 8 seat dining table without crowding the walls. Every rug we ship leaves Freeport with a certificate of authenticity recording origin, age, materials and measurements.

Design and Motifs

The field is built on a repeating lattice of linked cartouches and lobed medallions that runs corner to corner with no single centerpiece. Two motifs alternate down the length: a pointed rust diamond filled with a small 8 petal rosette and serrated outline, and a rounder slate blue rosette medallion framed by curling cloudband arms. Between them the weaver packed in split palmettes, small stellate flowerheads, curved leaf sprays and tiny navy buds, so the ground almost never shows bare. The main border carries a classic alternating rhythm of large blue palmette rosettes and ivory sunburst flowers on a rust ground, joined by a thin scrolling vine, with pale slate guard stripes on both sides holding small rosettes and paisley hooks. The corners resolve cleanly, which on a village weaving of this period tells you the cartoon was followed carefully rather than improvised at the ends.

A Detailed Look at the Colors

The ground is a creamy ivory with a faint straw cast, warm enough to sit against oak and walnut without looking stark. Against it the weaver worked a rust terracotta that reads brick red in daylight and deepens to a soft brown red in lamplight, used for both the diamond medallions and the wide border. The secondary palette does the real work: a dusty slate blue in two values, a near black navy that outlines the lattice and gives the field its crisp definition, warm gold and camel in the leaf work, salmon pink in the smaller flowerheads, and small touches of sage green in the border foliage. Ivory reappears inside the border rosettes and the guard stripes, tying the frame back to the field. Nothing here is loud, and buyers shopping ivory and beige Persian rugs will find this one considerably easier to place than a red ground piece of the same age.

Origin and Weaving Quality

Bakhtiari rugs come from the Chahar Mahal region southwest of Isfahan, woven in villages such as Shahrekord, Saman and Chalshotor by settled families of the Bakhtiari tribal confederation. The area is known for heavy, high lanolin wool off flocks grazed in the Zagros foothills, and for a dense, firmly beaten weave on a cotton foundation that gives these rugs their weight and their reputation for outlasting their owners. Most Bakhtiari weaving is angular and panelled; the floral village workshops closer to Isfahan produce curvilinear work like this one, where the vine has to bend smoothly around the lattice. The back photograph shows tight, regular rows with the knot nodes clearly legible and no slack in the weave, and the pile stands at an even 3/8" from end to end with full, glossy wool and no low spots, thinning or repair.