8'3" x 11'6" Persian Heriz Rug | Stepped Geometric Medallion, Brick Red Field | Excellent Condition

This is the rug that made Heriz a household name in American rooms, and this example is a good one. The field is brick red, pulled almost to oxblood in the places where the wool drank the most dye, and every line in it is drawn with a ruler and a right angle: a stepped medallion, hooked pendants top and bottom, and broad ivory spandrels that square off all 4 corners. The wool is the tough, springy fleece Heriz is known for, cut to a 3/8" pile that still stands up under a hand, and the knotting is even from end to end with no low spots. At 8'3" x 11'6" it belongs with the large Persian area rugs that hold a full seating group, all 4 furniture legs on the wool, without touching the baseboards. It ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming it as a hand-knotted Persian Heriz.

Design and Motifs

The center medallion is built in steps rather than curves, an 8 sided core with a small rosette at its heart, ringed by serrated leaves and thorn like hooks that radiate out to the medallion wall. Above and below it sit two anchor shaped pendants in navy and black, each filled with tiny palmettes. The ivory spandrels carry the same vocabulary at a larger scale, with big angular leaf forms, latch hooks and stylized blossoms spilling toward the field. Between medallion and corners the red ground is filled with detached palmettes, cypress like leaf sprays and small vine hooks, the kind of loose, confident filling that comes from weavers working the design from memory rather than from a full cartoon. The main border runs a navy black ground with alternating rosettes and turtle palmettes, framed by narrow reciprocal guard stripes in red and ivory, and both ends finish in a plain woven kilim and full ivory fringe. If this angular drawing is what you are after, it sits at the heart of the geometric Persian rugs tradition.

A Brick Red Field With Navy, Ivory and Green

Color is the whole argument for this rug. The ground is a warm brick red with madder depth behind it, and it moves: there is gentle abrash across the open field where one dye lot gave way to the next, lighter and cooler toward one end, richer toward the other. Against that red the border reads almost black, a very dark navy indigo that only shows its blue where the light catches the pile. Ivory does the structural work, outlining the medallion, filling the 4 corner spandrels and drawing the fine guard stripes, which keeps the whole thing from turning heavy. Inside the medallion and scattered through the corners are softer notes that reward a closer look: a dusty celadon green, a pale blue gray, salmon pink, mustard gold and small dark accents that sharpen the outlines. It is a red rug from across the room and a multi colored one from 3 feet away, which is exactly why Heriz sits comfortably with both antique furniture and plain modern upholstery.

Woven in the Heriz Villages of Northwest Persia

Heriz is a group of weaving villages east of Tabriz, on the slopes below Mount Sabalan in northwest Persia. The sheep there graze on mineral rich pasture and drink water carrying copper and other minerals, and the fleece that comes off them is famously tough, high in lanolin and slow to abrade, which is the real reason these rugs survive generations of traffic that would flatten a finer weave. The looms are village looms, the knot count sits in the range you expect from village work rather than a city workshop, and the thick cotton foundation with a heavy wool pile gives the rug its body and weight. That combination of durable wool, bold angular drawing and honest village construction is what buyers have wanted from a Heriz since the first ones reached New York over a century ago, and this 8'3" x 11'6" piece is a straightforward, well kept example of it.