8'6" x 11' Persian Heriz Rug | Brick Burgundy Geometric Medallion | Circa 1950s Hand-Knotted Wool

This is a mid-century Persian Heriz, woven around the 1950s on a cotton foundation with a dense wool pile, and it has the two things buyers look for in the type: honest village drawing and wool that has aged into a soft, slightly glossy surface. The field is brick burgundy, the medallion is outlined in near-black navy, and the open ground around it has settled into a warm sage and olive tone that only handspun, naturally dyed wool produces. At 8 x 11 Persian rugs scale it covers a full seating group or a table with chairs pulled out, and the pile is even from end to end with the original finish on all 4 sides. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The layout is the classic Heriz formula drawn with real confidence. A large stepped medallion sits dead center, built from an 8 point star rosette in teal and salmon, ringed by a navy outline that breaks into hooked lobes and vase-like pendants at the top and bottom axis. Four heavy corner spandrels in teal and ivory push in from the edges, each filled with serrated leaves, rosettes and angular vine work, and the ground between medallion and corners carries hooked palmettes, boteh-like leaf forms and small blossom heads. Everything is drawn in straight lines and angles rather than curves, which is what separates village work from city looms and is why collectors of geometric Persian rugs keep coming back to Heriz. The main border is a navy ground carrying large alternating rosettes and serrated leaf cartouches in ivory, salmon and green, framed by 2 narrow guard stripes of running vine.

A Palette of Brick Burgundy, Salmon, Sage and Blue

The dominant color is a brick burgundy that leans terracotta in daylight and deepens toward rust under lamplight. Around the medallion the field lifts into a soft sage green and pale olive, a genuine abrash from separate dye lots of handspun wool rather than any kind of wear, and that band of light green is the single most attractive feature of the rug in person. Against it sit salmon and coral rosettes, teal and sky blue leaf forms in the spandrels, ivory and cream outlines that keep every motif legible, and the near-black navy that carries the medallion frame and the main border. There is no harsh synthetic tone anywhere in the palette, which is exactly what you want from wool of this period. It is a warm rug that will sit comfortably with oak floors, leather, walnut furniture and both cream and deep green walls.

Heriz Weaving and Wool Quality

Heriz is a group of villages east of Tabriz, on the slopes below Mount Sabalan, where mineral-rich water gives the local fleece a reputation for toughness that no other Persian weaving region quite matches. The weavers there work from memory and from village cartoons rather than a fully drawn workshop design, which is why no two Heriz rugs of the same layout are identical. Knot counts in village Heriz are usually under 200 per square inch, and that is by design: a heavier knot on a strong cotton warp is what makes these rugs famous for lasting generations under real traffic. The back photograph here shows a clean, regular knot line with good definition of the border rosettes, and the pile has the dry handle and slight sheen that comes with 70 years of settling. If you want to understand how the age of a piece like this is judged, our guide on how to date an oriental rug walks through the same clues we used.