8'8" x 11'4" Persian Heriz Rug | Geometric Star Medallion in Brown, Rust & Beige | 2000s

This is a Heriz in an unusual key. Instead of the familiar brick red, the 8'8" x 11'4" field is a soft rosewood brown that turns almost mauve where the light catches the wool, and the classic angular medallion is drawn in beige and camel rather than ivory and navy. It was woven in the 2000s on a cotton foundation with a full wool pile, and the weave is tighter and more refined than most village work from the region, which is what lets the drawing hold its detail at this scale. At roughly 9 by 11 feet it covers a full seating group, so it sits comfortably in the large Persian rugs range without needing an oversize floor. Every rug we ship travels with a certificate of authenticity recording origin, materials, size and knotting.

Design and Motifs

The center holds an 8 point star medallion in beige, ringed by a chocolate brown cusped outline and finished with a small rosette pendant at top and bottom. Inside the star sits a circular rosette of sage, apricot and rose petals, the one place in the rug where the drawing turns fully curved. Around it the field runs bare on purpose, crossed only by thin vine tracery and scattered angular palmettes, serrated leaves and small cypress forms, so the eye reads the medallion first. Two large camel spandrels fill the corners with leafy vine and stiff blossom heads, their stepped edges cutting the field into a clean diamond. The main border is a brown ground carrying alternating octagonal rosettes and pinwheel flowerheads, framed by narrow reciprocal guard stripes and a beige vine minor border. It is textbook drawing for geometric Persian rugs, straight lines and stepped corners handled with real confidence.

A Brown, Rust and Beige Palette

The dominant note is a warm rosewood brown, closer to dusty rose in raking light and closer to cocoa in the shade, which is what gives this piece its velvety look in the close photographs. Against it the spandrels and medallion read camel, wheat and pale apricot, and the border ground shifts to a deeper rust brown with terracotta and cinnamon flowerheads. Small quantities of sage green appear in the leaves and in the center rosette, cooling the whole scheme just enough to keep it from going monochrome, and there are touches of soft salmon pink in the border medallions and outer band. The outer edge and the area just inside the ivory cotton fringe carry a paler rose tone. This is a genuinely neutral rug in tone but not a flat one: it works with cream plaster, walnut and oak furniture, brass, leather and greenery, and it will not fight a room that already has pattern in it.

Heriz Weaving in Northwest Persia

Heriz is a group of villages east of Tabriz, on the slopes below Mount Sabalan, and its reputation rests on two things: the mineral rich water that the sheep drink, which produces famously tough and slightly glossy wool, and a drawing tradition that translates court floral design into straight lines and stepped angles a village loom can hold. Weavers there work from memory and from small drawn guides rather than a full cartoon, which is why no two Heriz rugs are identical even within one design family. Most Heriz work sits below 200 knots per square inch; this piece is noticeably finer and more evenly beaten than the average, with a clear, legible knot grid on the reverse and crisp outlines even in the narrow guard stripes. The result is a rug built for traffic. The wool has body, the foundation is firm, the sides are straight, and the pile is full across all 8'8" x 11'4" of it.