8'2" x 12'2" Persian Heriz Serapi Rug | Geometric Medallion | Circa 1950s Wool

This 8'2" x 12'2" Persian Heriz was woven in the 1950s in the Serapi manner, the older and more open style of drawing that Heriz weavers kept for their better pieces: a wide, uncrowded field, a big architectural medallion, and plenty of air around every motif. The wool is the heavy, lustrous fleece the district is famous for, hand-knotted on a cotton foundation and clipped low, so the pile has aged into a soft sheen rather than thinning out. It is a true room-size piece that will sit under a full seating group with the front legs of the furniture on the rug, and it belongs in the same conversation as our other large Persian rugs. It ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a broad navy stepped medallion built from straight lines and notched steps, with a small ivory 8 petal rosette and a deep indigo square at its exact middle. Long serrated pendants run off the medallion at top and bottom, each one carrying a pale blue and salmon palmette. Four sea green spandrels close the corners, drawn with the same angular vocabulary of serrated leaves, hooked vines and blocky floral heads. The rust field between them is filled with large gold and ivory rosettes, cypress-like leaf forms and stiff vinework, exactly the kind of confident village drawing that makes geometric Persian rugs so easy to live with. The navy main border alternates rounded rosettes with broad turtle palmettes, framed by a camel guard stripe of small running vine.

A Rust Field With Sea Green Corners and a Navy Border

The field is a warm brick rust, not a hot fire-engine red, and it shifts gently across the width the way madder-dyed wool does when it is woven in small batches. Against it, the medallion and the main border read as a deep inky navy, close to black in the corner photographs and clearly blue where the light hits it. The four spandrels are the color collectors look for in these pieces: a dusty sea green that leans celadon, filled with salmon pink, soft coral and pale sky blue detail. Ivory carries the rosettes and the outlines, gold and camel light up the guard stripes and the larger flowerheads, and small touches of olive and dark brown sharpen the edges. Photographed in different light the red can look brighter or softer, but the palette is consistently warm and mellowed.

Woven in the Heriz District of Northwest Persia

Heriz is a cluster of villages east of Tabriz, on the slopes below Mount Sabalan, where mineral-rich water and famously tough highland wool produce a rug that simply outlasts its owners. The weavers work from memory and from a rough scale drawing rather than a full cartoon, which is why the lines are straight, the corners step instead of curve, and no two Heriz rugs of the same design are ever identical. Serapi is the trade name given to the older, more spacious Heriz drawing seen here. Village knot counts run below 200 knots per square inch by intention, since the value is in the wool, the dyes and the scale of the pattern. The heavy handle, the low even pile and the softened dye tones all match the 1950s dating, and the back shown here is the first place to look if you want to date an Oriental rug yourself.