8' x 10'11" Persian Heriz Rug | Geometric Medallion and Ivory Spandrels | Excellent Condition

Laid flat, this 8' x 10'11" Heriz reads as one confident piece of drawing: a brick red field, a single stepped medallion holding the center, and four ivory spandrels cutting the corners at hard angles. The pile is hand-knotted wool on a cotton foundation, heavy in the hand and standing at full height with no low spots, which is why it grades excellent. This is also the proportion most American rooms are actually built for, and 8 x 11 Persian rugs in this weight are the hardest to keep in stock. It ships from our Freeport, NY warehouse with a certificate of authenticity stating origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The center is a stepped, notched medallion on a dark navy ground, built out from a small pale blue cartouche and an 8 petal rosette core, then ringed by ivory diamonds and short serrated leaves. From the top and bottom of that medallion, hooked terminals and paired palmettes run out along the long axis, and the red field around them is filled with angular vine, curled rams-horn scrolls, blossom heads and small serrated leaves, all drawn in straight lines and diagonals rather than curves. The 4 corner spandrels are ivory and cream, each carrying its own geometric flowerhead group, so they frame the medallion instead of competing with it. The main border sits on near-black navy with large 8 point rosettes alternating with diagonal leaf bars, flanked by narrow reciprocal guard stripes in soft blue and ivory. Buyers who want that squared, architectural drawing rather than a flowing court pattern will recognize it immediately as one of the great geometric Persian rugs.

The Color Palette: Madder Brick Red, Ivory and Near-Black Navy

The field is a warm madder brick red that shifts between rust and a deeper terracotta as the light moves across the pile, with gentle bands of natural abrash that prove the yarn was dyed in small lots. Against it, the medallion and border ground read as a very dark navy that goes almost aubergine-black in the photographs taken at an angle. The lifting colors are salmon and coral pink in the leafwork and the medallion frame, ivory and buttery cream in the corner spandrels and the guard stripes, and a smoky pale blue in the reciprocal minor borders and the center cartouche. Scattered through the field are muted sage and pine greens, a soft camel brown, and small hits of true red, which is what gives the whole surface its multicolor depth at close range while still reading as a single warm red rug from across the room.

Heriz: Village Weaving East of Tabriz

Heriz is a group of weaving villages east of Tabriz, on the slopes below Mount Sabalan in northwest Persia, and the reason its rugs are famous has as much to do with water and sheep as with design. The mineral-rich water of the region and the highland grazing produce a wool that is coarse, springy and unusually strong, and the village looms translate that into a thick, tightly beaten weave on a cotton foundation. Heriz weavers work from memory and from squared village drawings rather than a fine city cartoon, which is exactly why the line here is angular: stepped medallion outlines, straight-sided spandrels, leaves resolved into diagonals. Village knotting in this tradition is usually a moderate count by design, because the point is a rug that can take generations of foot traffic without going thin. On a floor at 8' x 10'11", that combination of heavy wool, dense beat-down and honest geometric drawing is the whole argument for a Heriz.