8' x 11'5" Vintage Persian Heriz Rug | Geometric Star Medallion | Red, Ivory & Graphite Black

This 8' x 11'5" Persian Heriz is the kind of village rug people keep for 40 years and then hand down. It is hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation, with a 3/8" pile that still stands full and even across the whole field, and the drawing is pure Heriz: a big angular star medallion floating on a deep red ground, ivory corner spandrels, and a graphite black main border that frames the whole thing with real weight. The wool has the slight color movement and hand-drawn asymmetry that only comes from a loom in a weaver's home, never from a machine. It ships with a certificate of authenticity, and at 8 by 11 and a half feet it covers a standard seating group with the furniture front legs on.

Design and Motifs

The center is an 8 point star medallion built in stepped blocks, its core an ivory rosette ringed by small hooked leaves and tiny stylized birds and blossoms in rose, gold and blue. Above and below it sit two black pendant cartouches with serrated leaf forms inside, and the 4 corner spandrels repeat the same vocabulary in ivory, so the eye reads a clear cross axis from any direction. The field between medallion and spandrels is filled with large angular palmettes, crab-like leaf forms and hooked vine arms, all drawn in straight lines and diagonals rather than curves, which is exactly how Heriz weavers work from memory instead of a full cartoon. The main border carries alternating rosettes and blocky lozenge palmettes on black, flanked by narrow guard bands of tumbling flowerheads in caramel and rose. If you like this kind of bold, architectural drawing, it sits at the heart of the geometric Persian rugs tradition.

A Red, Ivory and Graphite Black Palette

Red is the anchor, but it is not one flat red. The open field reads as a warm brick to crimson tone that shifts subtly across the width where the dye lots met on the loom, and inside the medallion the same family deepens into oxblood and burgundy. Against that, the ivory spandrels and medallion core come through almost cream, a touch buttery rather than bleached white, which is what gives the rug its lit-from-inside look in daylight. The graphite black used for the main border and the pendant panels is a true charcoal black with a faint aubergine cast where the pile catches the light, and it does the heavy lifting of containing all that red. Small accents of gold, camel, rose, slate blue and soft green appear in the leaf forms and border rosettes, enough to tie the rug to warm woods, brass and leather without making it busy. Buyers who want an 8 by 11 in this classic red and black range will find it among the deeper 8 x 11 Persian rugs.

Heriz Weaving in Northwest Persia

Heriz is a group of villages east of Tabriz, on the slopes below Mount Sabalan in northwest Persia. The local water runs high in minerals, and the sheep grazed on those hillsides grow a famously tough, high-lanolin fleece that takes dye well and resists crushing for decades, which is the practical reason Heriz rugs survive hallways, dining chairs and dogs when finer city rugs do not. Weavers here knot on a cotton warp and weft, beat the rows down hard, and draw their medallions in straight lines because the design is carried in the head and worked out block by block rather than copied from a painted cartoon. Village Heriz work is normally woven under 200 knots per square inch, and that is not a shortcoming: the heavier knot and the thick wool pile are precisely what give the rug its structure and its long working life. The small irregularities in this piece, a medallion point a hair off center, a border motif that steps differently on one side, are the signature of that hand process.