8' x 10'7" Persian Heriz Rug | Semi-Antique Geometric Medallion | Brick Red & Ivory

This is a hand-knotted Persian Heriz at the size most American rooms are actually built around, 8' x 10'7", with a cotton foundation, a full wool pile and the kind of even surface that tells you it was used carefully or not much at all. The field reads brick red under daylight, the medallion sits dead center with olive and black at its heart, and the four ivory spandrels break up the corners exactly as a good village drawing should. Handling it, the wool feels dry and springy rather than slick, which is the Heriz signature and the reason these rugs survive decades of furniture and foot traffic. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The layout is the classic Heriz formula drawn with real confidence. A stepped, 8 point medallion fills the middle of the field, built up from notched outlines rather than curves, with a small black lozenge at the very center holding 4 rosettes around a blue dot. Above and below it run tall anchor pendants, each capped with a serrated palmette. Four ivory octagonal cartouches, 2 at the top of the medallion and 2 below, carry their own miniature floral heads and give the composition its rhythm. The open red ground around the medallion is scattered with angular vinework, hooked leaves and tiny botehs, all drawn in straight lines because the village loom and the knot count push the weaver toward the grid rather than the curve. Ivory spandrels close the 4 corners with vine scroll and blossom heads, and the main black border carries alternating hooked crosses and lozenge palmettes between narrow rosette guard stripes. If you like the honest, angular look of geometric Persian rugs, this is a textbook example of the type.

Brick Red, Olive, Ivory and Blue

The dominant color is a warm brick red, closer to terracotta than to cherry, with a soft tonal variation across the field that comes from the dye lots rather than from wear. Inside the medallion the ground shifts to a muted olive green, a color Heriz weavers use sparingly, and it reads almost bronze where the light catches the pile. Black anchors the main border and the outlines of every motif, keeping the red from going flat, while ivory does the lifting: the 4 corner spandrels, the octagonal cartouches inside the medallion and the narrow outline that frames the whole field. Blue appears in small deliberate doses, a periwinkle shade in the leaf forms and border rosettes and a deeper navy in the outlining, which is what gives the rug its cool counterweight. Soft brown and camel run through the outer guard stripe. Together the palette sits comfortably with walnut and oak floors, leather, and both cream and charcoal walls, which is why red and burgundy Persian rugs in this size remain the easiest traditional pieces to place.

Heriz: Village Weaving East of Tabriz

Heriz is a group of villages in northwest Persia, east of Tabriz on the slopes below Mount Sabalan. The wool from that region is famously tough, and the local water is mineral rich, both of which are credited with the durability and the deep dye saturation that make Heriz rugs the workhorses of the Persian world. Weavers there work from memory and from small drawn cartoons rather than a fully painted master design, which is why the medallion here is angular, the corners are stepped and no two Heriz rugs of the same pattern are truly identical. Village knot counts generally sit under 200 knots per square inch, and that is by design: a heavier knot on a stout cotton foundation with a full wool pile produces a rug meant to be lived on for generations, not admired behind glass. This piece is woven to that standard, squarely in the 8 x 11 Persian rug range that suits a full dining set or a seating group with all 4 legs on the rug.