8'3" x 10'10" Persian Heriz Rug | Stepped Geometric Medallion | Thick Wool Pile, Excellent Condition

Laid flat, this 8'3" x 10'10" Persian Heriz reads as a single architectural statement: a stepped diamond medallion set on a deep madder red field, four ivory corner spandrels crowded with serrated leaf and vine, and a wide navy border of palmettes and rosettes holding the whole thing together. The wool has weight and shine to it, the drawing is confident rather than fussy, and the proportions fall into the most usable of all room sizes, which is why 8x11 Persian rugs sell before almost anything else on the floor. It ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a stepped, hooked medallion built from concentric diamonds, with a small ivory-outlined rectangle at its core and 4 octagonal cartouches, 2 above and 2 below, each filled with a camel-colored hooked figure. Blade-like pendants run off the medallion toward each end of the field, tipped with narrow indigo cartouches. The red ground around the medallion is not left empty for a moment: serrated leaves, herringbone stems, hooked vines and small blossoms fill every inch in the way only village weavers working from memory manage. The 4 ivory spandrels carry the same vocabulary in reverse, pale ground with red and blue drawing, and they square off the composition cleanly. The main border alternates palmettes with 8 petal rosettes on a dark aubergine ground, flanked by narrow guard stripes of meandering vine. If you like this kind of straight-line, angular drawing, it belongs squarely with the best geometric Persian rugs.

A Field of Madder Red Against Ivory and Indigo

The field is a warm madder red, deep and slightly tomato-leaning under direct light, with the gentle tonal drift across the width that tells you the yarn was dyed in small batches. Against it the ivory is genuinely bright, an undyed cream wool used both for the spandrels and for the fine outlining that gives every motif its edge. Indigo does the heavy work in between: a dark navy in the medallion core and the border ground, a clearer mid blue in the leaves and blossoms scattered across the field. Camel and soft gold appear in the octagonal cartouches, in the border rosettes and in scattered highlights, and a chocolate brown darkens the outer guard stripe and parts of the vine work. Small touches of rose and pale blue turn up in the spandrels on close inspection. Anyone shopping red and burgundy rugs for a room with wood floors or warm neutrals should look hard at this one.

Heriz: Mountain Wool and Straight Lines

Heriz is a cluster of weaving villages east of Tabriz, sitting below Mount Sabalan in northwest Persia. The water there is mineral rich, which is widely credited with the toughness and high sheen of the local fleece, and the wool from those flocks is some of the hardest wearing used anywhere in Persia. Heriz weavers work on a cotton foundation from village cartoons rather than fully drawn court designs, so the line is angular by nature: stepped corners, straight diagonals, a medallion built out of blocks instead of curves. Knot counts in these villages sit below the fine city workshops, and that is precisely the point, since the coarser knot allows a thicker, springier pile that shrugs off decades of traffic. The back of this piece, shown against a ruler in the last photograph, is evenly tied throughout with no slack or buckling, and the 3/8" pile stands up straight across the whole field.