8' x 12' Persian Heriz Rug | Semi-Antique Sharabian Floral Medallion | Salmon Pink and Brilliant Blue Wool

This is a Heriz that behaves more like a workshop piece than a village rug. The 8' x 12' field is hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation, the pile still stands a full 3/8" deep, and the drawing flows in curves rather than the blunt angles most buyers expect from the district. Decades of use have taken nothing out of it: the salmon pink ground has mellowed into a soft, lit-from-within tone, the brilliant blue is still sharp, and the ends and sides are sound. A piece of this age is worth reading properly, and our guide on how to date an Oriental rug explains what we look at on the back. Every rug we ship carries a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

A lobed indigo medallion sits dead center, and at its heart is a crisp 8 petal ivory rosette outlined in dark brown, the single clearest note in a very busy field. From the medallion the drawing opens outward into large curled palmettes, serrated leaves and thin vine work that fills the salmon ground right up to the ivory spandrels in the 4 corners. Above and below the medallion sit heavy floral pendants in rose and indigo, weighting the long axis. The main border runs deep navy with a chain of large rosettes and angular vine cartouches, framed by narrow guard stripes in rose, gold and ivory. Small ivory and blue leaf fragments are scattered through the field the way a village weaver fills open ground, and they keep the pattern lively at floor level rather than flat.

A Salmon Pink Field Against Brilliant Blue

The field reads as a warm salmon pink over brick, a tone that shifts with the light and photographs slightly redder in the full overhead view than it looks in the close-up floor shot. Against it the weaver set brilliant blue, from a mid cornflower in the leaves and flower heads to a near-black indigo in the medallion core and the main border. Ivory carries the spandrels, the central rosette and hundreds of small highlights, and it is what keeps the red and blue from fusing into one dark mass. Secondary notes include dusty rose in the pendants, olive green in the vine stems, soft gold in the guard stripes and a few dark brown outlines used to lock shapes in place. In a room with cream walls or pale oak floors the salmon dominates; under lamplight in the evening the blues come forward. It is a red rug that never reads heavy, which is exactly why this colorway sells among large Persian rugs for main living spaces.

Woven in the Heriz District of Northwest Persia

Heriz is a group of weaving villages east of Tabriz, on the slopes below Mount Sabalan, where mineral-rich water and famously tough highland wool produce rugs that outlast their owners. Sharabian is one of those villages, and its weavers are known for taking the standard Heriz layout and drawing it with a finer, more curvilinear hand, closer to city work than to the blunt stepped medallions of Gorevan or Ahar. That is what you see here: the same ironclad wool and cotton construction, but the curves resolved cleanly. Most Heriz village weaving sits under 200 knots per square inch, and the back of this piece, shown against a ruler, is tight and even with straight rows and no bowing. Combined with the heavy 3/8" pile, that structure is why an 8' x 12' Heriz of this age still lies flat, still holds its shape under furniture, and will take another generation of traffic without complaint.