9'1" x 11'9" Persian Heriz Rug | Geometric Stepped Medallion | Red, Navy & Ivory | Excellent Condition

This is a full room size Heriz, hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation and measuring 9'1" x 11'9", which drops neatly into the 9x12 Persian rug footprint most American living rooms are built around. The handle is exactly what you want from this weaving group: a firm, heavy body, a clipped and even pile with no thin spots, and flat selvages that have held their shape. Condition is excellent throughout, with the drawing crisp from end to end and the corners still square, as the full-length view shows. The close-up of the pile against a ruler gives you an honest look at the wool and the knot count of a village loom. Every rug ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming it as a genuine hand-knotted Persian Heriz.

Design and Motifs

The layout is the classic Heriz statement: one large stepped medallion anchored dead center, flanked by long lance-shaped pendants top and bottom, with four broad ivory corner spandrels closing the field. Everything is drawn on the diagonal and the straight, so each palmette, hooked leaf and serrated vine resolves in angles rather than curves, which is the signature of these looms and the reason the pattern reads clearly from across a room. Inside the medallion sits a small rosette core ringed by ivory hooks and stepped outlines. The field around it is filled with big angular blossoms, cypress-like forms and barbed leaves that are near mirror images across both axes, though the weavers allowed small variations from one quarter to the next, the kind of hand-drawn asymmetry collectors look for. The main border carries a repeating lozenge and rosette chain between narrow floral guard stripes, framing the whole composition without competing with it. If you are shopping the family of geometric Persian rugs, this is the benchmark drawing.

Color Palette

The field is a warm brick to tomato red that shifts with the light, reading deeper and more oxblood in the raking view and brighter, almost terracotta, where the pile lies toward the camera. Against it the central medallion is a deep indigo navy, nearly black at its edges, which is what gives the composition its weight and holds the eye in the middle of the room. The four corner spandrels are a soft undyed ivory to cream, a high contrast frame that lifts the red and makes the rug feel larger than its measurements. Through the field and the drawing you get olive green and khaki in the leaves, a muted slate blue and dove grey in the palmettes, rose and salmon pink in the smaller blossoms, and touches of camel, walnut brown and chestnut in the outlines. The main border returns to the same indigo ground with red, ivory and olive figures, so the palette closes where it began. Nothing here is loud or synthetic looking, and the mellow, slightly variegated red is the reason this piece sits comfortably with both antique furniture and plain modern upholstery. Buyers working a warm scheme can compare it against other red and burgundy Persian rugs.

Heriz Origin and Weaving Quality

Heriz is a cluster of villages east of Tabriz in northwest Persia, spread across the slopes below Mount Sabalan. Two things made the district famous. The first is the water, which is heavily mineralized and is credited with the exceptional toughness and shine of the local fleece. The second is the drawing tradition: village weavers worked from memory and from small scale drawings rather than a fully painted cartoon, so the curved court patterns of the city workshops were translated into straight lines, stepped outlines and bold angular forms. The result is a rug built for generations of foot traffic, with a thick wool pile packed onto a strong cotton warp and a beat-down that leaves the body dense and stiff rather than floppy. Knot counts here sit below the fine city looms by design, because the point of a Heriz is durability and scale, not miniature detail. The Heriz group is sold and collected within the wider Tabriz weaving region, and pieces of this size and condition are the ones that stay in families.