8'8" x 11'8" Persian Heriz Rug | Dark Red Field, Ivory Spandrels | Stepped Geometric Medallion

This is a classic room-size Heriz in the format collectors look for first: a dark red field, a single large stepped medallion, and 4 ivory corner spandrels that open the drawing up and keep the weight of the red in balance. The wool is heavy and lustrous, the pile is full and even across all 140 inches of length, and the handle is the firm, substantial one you expect from a well woven village rug of this class. At 8'8" x 11'8" it sits squarely in the most useful large room proportion, the practical answer for buyers shopping 9x12 Persian rugs who want one piece to anchor a whole room. Every rug we ship leaves with a certificate of authenticity confirming it is hand-knotted in Persia.

Design and Motifs

The center medallion is built in layers: an 8 petal ivory rosette around a small red and black core, set inside a navy lozenge whose outline steps outward in short angular jogs rather than curves. Above and below it, tall serrated pendants reach toward the ends of the field, each filled with a lanceolate leaf in ivory and indigo. The red ground between medallion and spandrels is not left empty; it carries scattered angular palmettes, hooked vine stems, small birds and star flowers, drawn with the frank, slightly bold hand that makes geometric Persian rugs read so clearly from across a room. The 4 corner spandrels repeat the same vocabulary on ivory, each anchored by a large blue palmette with curling arms. Framing all of it is a navy main border of alternating rosettes and turtle palmettes, flanked by narrow reciprocal guard stripes in rust, ivory and gold.

The Dark Red Field and Its Supporting Palette

The field is a deep madder red that shifts between brick and wine depending on where the light falls, with the gentle tonal movement that only naturally variable wool and hand-dyed yarn produce. Against it, the ivory of the spandrels reads warm and slightly creamy rather than stark white, which softens the contrast at the 4 corners. The medallion core and the main border go almost black-blue, giving the design its structure, while inside the drawing you find a surprisingly wide supporting palette: powder and cornflower blue in the leaves and birds, dusty rose and salmon in the smaller blossoms, mustard gold in the vine tips, and warm brown and camel in the outlining. The close-up photographs show those secondary colors clearly, and they are what keeps a red rug of this size from ever looking flat or one-note on the floor.

Heriz Weaving in Northwest Persia

Heriz names a group of weaving villages east of Tabriz, on the slopes below Mount Sabalan, where mineral-rich water and hard mountain pasture produce a wool that is famously tough and unusually glossy. Weavers there work from memory and from small scale drawings rather than a full cartoon, which is exactly why the medallion is drawn in straight lines and stepped angles: the design is resolved knot by knot on the loom. That tradition gives the rug its two defining qualities, a bold graphic presence and real structural durability, since the thick wool pile on a cotton foundation takes generations of foot traffic without thinning. Village Heriz weaving normally sits below 200 knots per square inch, and the value here is not in fineness but in the wool, the dyes and the confidence of the drawing.