8'6" x 9'8" Persian Heriz Rug | Geometric Medallion | Brick Red & Ivory, Excellent Condition

This is a Persian Heriz in an unusually generous, almost square 8'6" x 9'8" format, hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation and still carrying a full 3/8" pile. The drawing is pure village Heriz: one large stepped medallion holding the center, heavy ivory corner spandrels pushing in from all 4 sides, and a brick red field packed with angular leaves, rosettes and hooked vines. It is wider than a standard 8x10, which makes it sit well under a square coffee table grouping or a round dining table where a long rectangle would look stranded. The rug is in excellent condition with even pile and clean, intact fringes, and it ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The center holds an 8 lobed stepped medallion outlined in ivory, with a small turquoise blue rosette at its core and black anchor shaped pendants reaching north and south. Around it the weaver has filled the field with the angular vocabulary that defines these geometric Persian rugs: serrated palmettes, hooked vine stems, barbed leaves and tiny 4 petal blossoms, every curve resolved into a straight line because the village loom counts knots rather than sketches arcs. The 4 corner spandrels are drawn on ivory grounds with stepped edges and their own miniature medallions, including a charming lattice panel of blue and rust blossoms visible in the corner detail. The main border runs a black ground of alternating rosettes and turtle palmettes in rust, gold and sky blue, framed by narrow guard stripes of reciprocal blue and ivory. Nothing here is mechanical: individual motifs shift in size and color from one repeat to the next, which is the fingerprint of a single weaver working from memory.

A Palette of Brick Red, Indigo and Ivory

The field is a warm brick red with a terracotta cast rather than a hard crimson, the kind of red that picks up warmth from lamplight instead of glaring under it. Two distinct blues carry the design: a deep indigo that reads almost navy in the border and medallion outlines, and a brighter sky blue used inside the medallion lobes and scattered as small accents across the field. Black is used structurally, anchoring the main border and the pendants above and below the medallion so the composition has weight at top and bottom. Undyed ivory does the rest of the work, lighting up the corner spandrels, the outlines of the medallion and the fringe at both ends. Small touches of gold, soft rose and olive appear in the palmettes, and there are quiet passages of abrash across the red that shift the tone by a shade or two. The overall effect is rich but grounded, easy to place against oak floors, leather and warm neutral walls.

Heriz: The Village Looms East of Tabriz

Heriz is a cluster of weaving villages east of Tabriz, below the slopes of Mount Sabalan, where mineral-rich water and famously tough local wool produce a pile that resists crushing for generations. The drawing is deliberately angular, straight lines and stepped corners rather than the flowing curved vine of a city workshop, because the design is carried in the weaver's head and counted knot by knot rather than traced from a cartoon. Village Heriz work usually sits under 200 knots per square inch, and that is the point: a heavy, honest weave with thick wool pile that takes decades of traffic and only gets better looking for it. The back of this piece, shown against a tape measure, reveals tight even rows and a firm handle. Among large Persian rugs, the near square 8'6" x 9'8" proportion is genuinely uncommon and worth grabbing when the room calls for it.