8'4" x 11'8" Persian Heriz Rug | Salmon Red Geometric Medallion | Excellent Condition

This 8'4" x 11'8" Persian Heriz is the village weave that built the reputation of northwest Persia: a heavy 3/8" wool pile on a cotton foundation, drawn entirely in straight lines and stepped angles. The salmon red field carries a broad navy medallion with a cruciform rosette at its heart, and the whole composition is framed by a deep indigo border that pulls the red forward. It is a true room-size piece, generous enough to sit under a full seating group or a 10 seat table, and it belongs in the same conversation as the best geometric Persian rugs we import. Condition is excellent, with full even pile across the field and clean secure ends, and the rug ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming it as a hand-knotted Persian Heriz.

Design and Motifs

The center holds an 8 lobed stepped medallion in navy and rose, built from hooked outlines rather than curves, with a small cruciform rosette and 4 tiny anchor arms at the exact middle. Two long serrated pendants run north and south from the medallion, each filled with a feathered palmette. The diamond shaped inner field around it is packed with angular vinework, hooked leaf forms and small blossoms, all drawn with the confident hand that Heriz weavers work from memory rather than from a full cartoon. Ivory spandrels fill the 4 corners of the field and give the design its breathing room, each one carrying its own palmette cluster and sky blue rosettes. The main border is a navy ground carrying alternating rosettes and angular leaf brackets, flanked by 2 narrow guard stripes, so the eye is held inside the composition instead of drifting off the edge.

A Salmon Red Field with Deep Navy and Ivory

The dominant color is a warm salmon red, closer to terracotta and brick than to a hot crimson, and it shifts gently across the field as the light moves, which is the natural abrash of hand-spun wool taking dye at slightly different rates. Against it the medallion and border read as a very dark navy that goes almost black in low light and opens into true indigo in daylight. Ivory does the structural work: it outlines the medallion, fills the 4 corner spandrels and traces the fine vine lines, keeping the pattern legible from across a room. Between those 3 anchors there are quieter notes, dusty rose in the leaf forms, a clear sky blue in the small rosettes, soft camel and pale apricot in the spandrel scrollwork, and occasional charcoal. The palette is restrained and mature, which is why a Heriz of this coloring sits comfortably with both antique furniture and modern upholstery.

Heriz Weaving in Northwest Persia

Heriz is a cluster of villages east of Tabriz, on the slopes below Mount Sabalan, and the rugs made there owe much of their character to the ground itself. The mineral-rich water gives the local fleece an unusually high lanolin content, producing wool that is coarse, springy and famously hard-wearing, and the weavers spin it thick and knot it firm on a cotton foundation. Village looms in this district work without the detailed workshop cartoons used in city ateliers, which is why the drawing is angular, the medallion stepped and the symmetry pleasantly imperfect. Most Heriz weaving sits below 200 knots per square inch by design, since the point of the rug was never fineness but durability, and pieces of this construction routinely stay in one family for 3 or 4 generations. At 8'4" x 11'8" this one lands squarely in the most useful room size, a format worth comparing against our other large Persian rugs.