8'6" x 12' Persian Sarouk Rug | Wool | Red and Sapphire Blue

This 8'6" x 12' rug was knotted in Persia to a Sarouk drawing, with a wool pile clipped to 3/8". The field is a deep raspberry red that reads closer to crimson where the light runs across the pile, and it carries one lobed medallion in sapphire blue at the centre with ivory spandrels filling the four corners. From across a room the red arrives first and the blue and ivory do the drawing.

The design

The medallion is built in tiers: a small blue rosette at the very centre, then a four-lobed blue cartouche ringed in terracotta and ivory, then eight blue roundels around the outside, each one holding a single flowerhead. Short pendants run off the top and bottom of it into the open rectangular field, which is otherwise left largely bare apart from thin vines carrying small eight-petalled rosettes and the occasional leafy spray. The ivory spandrels are drawn with a serrated edge and packed with scrolling vinework over patches of very dark green and blue-black. The main border is red, with large fan palmettes alternating with pairs of blue split leaves, and it sits between narrow guard stripes, one of them a yellow zigzag that runs the full perimeter.

The colour

The ground is a cool red with a raspberry cast rather than a tomato one, and the outlining throughout is a darker brownish red that keeps the drawing from floating. Against that the medallion is sapphire blue going almost indigo at its edges, lifted by a band of terracotta and by small flowerheads in rose pink. Ivory does most of the separating work, in the spandrels and in the fine outlines, with olive green, saffron yellow and a few touches of pale sky blue scattered through the palmettes of the border.

The making

It is hand-knotted throughout, in wool at a 3/8" pile, and the detail photograph of the reverse shows the pattern coming through clearly with even, regular knot rows. The ends finish in plain ivory fringe. Condition is given as excellent, and the pile in the photographs stands up evenly across the field with no thinning around the medallion or at the corners.