8'9" x 10'7" Persian Sarouk Rug | All-Over Floral on Burgundy | Antique 1940s Wool

This is a 1940s Persian Sarouk rug of the type that was woven for the American market and then kept in one family for two or three generations. The wool has the glassy sheen that only decades of use and a good clip produce, visible in the folded corner photograph where the pile breaks in the light. At 8'9" x 10'7" it sits squarely in the 8x11 Persian rugs range, wide enough to carry a sofa and two chairs without crowding the walls. The back tag reads rug number F6691 at 8.9 x 10.7, and the piece ships with our certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

There is no medallion here. The field is drawn as an all-over composition of detached floral sprays, each one a small bouquet of rosettes, buds and curling serrated leaves rising from a slim stem, set in staggered rows so the eye keeps moving across the surface. Scattered between them are 8 petal rosettes, boteh leaves and small vase forms, several of them in the pale ivory and gold that keeps the dense field from going flat. A narrow light blue guard stripe frames the field, then the main border runs deep navy with alternating pink and rose palmettes linked by vine scroll, and a second blue stripe closes the drawing on the outside. The corners are resolved cleanly on the long sides, which is the mark of a cartoon followed properly rather than improvised at the edge.

A Burgundy Field With Blue, Green and Rose

The ground is a deep burgundy that photographs differently depending on the light, reading true wine red in the angled floor shot and taking on a raspberry to plum cast in the overhead views, which is typical of lustrous Sarouk wool and part of the appeal of burgundy Persian rugs. Against it the flowers work in two blues, a bright cornflower and a softer sky tone, with sage and bottle green leaves, rose pink and salmon petals, apricot, mustard gold and chalky ivory. The navy border is almost black in the shade and opens up to show pink, gold and turquoise detail under direct light. The abrash across the field is gentle, a slight deepening of the red from one end toward the other, which is the signature of small batch vegetal dye lots rather than any kind of fading.

Sarouk Weaving in Central Persia

Sarouk is a village in the Arak district of central Persia, and its looms built their reputation on heavy, tightly packed wool pile on a cotton foundation, a rug meant to be walked on for a century. The weave on this piece is firm and even, the pile still thick enough to stand the knots upright, and the handle is substantial in the way collectors expect from this group. The floral spray layout, the navy border and the burgundy ground together place it in the 1940s production run, and the construction details on the back are exactly what you look at when you want to date an antique Oriental rug rather than take a seller's word for it. Pieces like this are getting harder to find with the pile intact, and the wool on this one is still singing.