8'7" x 10'9" Persian Heriz Rug | Red, Ivory & Graphite Black Geometric Medallion | Excellent Condition

A classic village Heriz in the proportions people actually buy: 8'7" x 10'9" covers a seating group without swallowing the room, which is why 8x11 Persian rugs move faster than almost any other size we carry. The pile is a full 3/8" of dense highland wool on a cotton foundation, hand-knotted one knot at a time, and it has aged the way good Heriz wool does: the reds have settled, the surface has picked up a light sheen, and the pile is still even from end to end with no thin areas. The back photograph shows a tight, regular knot structure and original ivory fringe. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The layout is the textbook Heriz formula, drawn entirely in straight lines and angles. A large 8 pointed medallion in graphite black sits at the center, filled with hooked salmon and olive palmettes that radiate from a small ivory cartouche. The red field around it carries angular vine work, stepped leaf forms and small octagonal rosettes, with pale ivory cartouches scattered through the corners of the field. Two big ivory spandrels anchor the ends, each packed with curling vine and serrated leaves that give the composition its breathing room. The main border repeats a turtle palmette and diamond rosette chain on graphite black, framed by narrow reciprocal guard stripes. It is the sort of confident, ruler-straight drawing that defines geometric Persian rugs, with just enough small irregularity to prove it came off a village loom and not a machine.

Red, Ivory and Graphite Black Coloring

The field reads as a deep madder red that shifts between brick and a cooler oxblood depending on which way the pile is brushed, a movement you can see clearly in the angled photograph. Against it the medallion and the border are a graphite black so dark it reads nearly charcoal indoors, and that contrast is what makes the drawing legible from across a room. Ivory does the lifting: the two large spandrels, the small field cartouches and the thin guard stripes all sit in a warm cream rather than a bright white, which keeps the rug soft under lamplight. Inside the medallion the weaver worked in salmon pink, olive green and a dry camel tan, and the border picks up cornflower blue rosettes and sea foam green accents. Nothing here is loud. The palette sits comfortably with oak floors, leather, walnut furniture and both warm and cool wall colors.

Woven in the Heriz Villages of Northwest Persia

Heriz is a group of villages east of Tabriz, on the slopes below Mount Sabalan, and the rugs made there have a reputation built on two things: water and wool. The mineral-rich water of the region is credited with the famously tough, high-lanolin fleece that makes a Heriz wear like iron, and the local weavers translate curved city designs into bold angular drawing worked from memory rather than a full cartoon. Village Heriz weaving usually sits under 200 knots per square inch, which is exactly the point of the type: heavier knots, a thicker pile and a rug that takes decades of traffic instead of being protected from it. This one has the color settling and surface patina of an older weaving, and if you want to understand how those signs are read, our guide on how to date an oriental rug walks through them. It is a rug meant to be used hard and still look right in 30 years.