8'4" x 11'4" Persian Rug | All-Over Palmette & Serrated Leaf Design | 1970s Rust Red Field

Hand-knotted in Persia in the 1970s, this 8'4" x 11'4" rug takes a coral rust red ground and fills it corner to corner with angular flowering vinework, so the eye keeps moving instead of settling on one large medallion. The pile is heavy, lanolin-rich wool knotted on a cotton foundation, and the surface has the deep glow that only wool of this grade develops over 50 years. It falls into the 8x11 bracket, the size most often chosen for a full seating group or a table with 6 chairs, and you can see other pieces in that range on our 8x11 Persian rugs page. Condition is perfect, the ends and sides are sound, and the rug ships with a certificate of authenticity documenting its origin, age and construction.

Design and Motifs

The field is a true all-over composition. A slender gold vine runs the length of the rug as a central axis, throwing off angular branches that carry broad serrated leaves, split palmettes, 8 petal rosettes and small blossom clusters in every direction. At the exact center sits a compact stepped rosette medallion, no wider than a dinner plate, ringed in navy with green and rose petals, and it acts as an anchor rather than the main event. Two smaller navy leaf cartouches flank it on the horizontal axis. Along the edges the drawing repeats in half and quarter units, the way village weavers handle all-over rugs so the pattern reads as continuous rather than cropped. The main border is a wide sapphire and indigo band of turtle palmettes and flowering stems outlined in saffron, set between a teal guard stripe of linked rosettes and a narrow black outer edge. Every motif is drawn with straight lines and stepped diagonals, the hallmark of a loom worked from memory and a village cartoon rather than a fine urban master drawing.

A Rust Red Field Lit by Indigo, Teal and Saffron

The ground is a warm coral rust red, madder toned rather than blue-red, and it shifts subtly in horizontal bands where the weaver moved from one dye lot to the next, the natural abrash that gives an old wool field its depth. Against it the palette is unusually broad for a village piece: deep indigo and mid sapphire in the leaves and cartouches, a soft teal green that carries the guard borders, saffron and old gold in the vine outlines, ivory and cream in the larger palmettes, olive green, dusty rose, terracotta and flashes of aubergine purple. The main border swings the balance the other way, putting blue in charge with gold and rose blossoms scattered across it, which frames the red field cleanly and keeps the rug from reading as a single block of color. It is a strong, saturated read that suits oak, walnut and painted furniture equally well, and it sits with the deeper pieces in our red and burgundy rugs selection.

Woven in Persia: Village Craft and Weave Quality

No town is marked on this rug, but the evidence in the weave points clearly to the northwest Persian village tradition: angular geometric drawing, tough long-staple highland wool, a cotton warp and weft, and a bold high-contrast palette assembled from whatever the local dyers had on hand. Rugs like this were woven at home on upright looms over many months, one family to a loom, and the slight waver in the border repeats and the drift in the field bands are the signature of that method rather than a fault. The pile is knotted densely enough to stand upright and thick enough to take decades of traffic without thinning, which is exactly why 1970s Persian village weaving has held its value while machine-made pieces from the same decade have not. The way the wool has mellowed, the softening of the reds and the condition of the ends are all points we look at when judging a piece, a process we set out in our guide on how to date an oriental rug.