9'10" x 12'11" Persian Heriz Rug | Geometric Medallion | Excellent Condition

This is a full room-size Persian Heriz at 9'10" x 12'11", hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation and still carrying an even 3/8" pile from selvedge to selvedge. The drawing is pure village Heriz: one large stepped medallion anchored in the center of a deep brick red field, ivory corner spandrels at all 4 corners, and a wide navy main border of palmettes and serrated leaves. The back photo shows tight, regular knotting and clean cotton warps, the kind of honest structure that lets a rug of this weight live under furniture for generations. Condition is excellent, with no repairs or wear areas to report, and it ships with a certificate of authenticity. Buyers sizing a great room or a long dining table will find it filed with our other 10x13 Persian rugs.

Design and Motifs

The center medallion is built from stepped, angular outlines in ivory and navy, with an 8 petal rosette at its heart in rose and gold sitting on a soft blue ground. Above and below it, tall pendant cartouches drop into the field, each finished with a small hooked crest. The open red field around the medallion is not empty for a moment: angular vine scrolls, hooked palmettes, tiny stylized birds and cypress forms fill the ground in the loose, improvised way that separates a village loom from a city cartoon. The 4 ivory spandrels repeat the same vocabulary in reverse, so the corners read as bright anchors against the red. Framing all of it, the navy main border alternates large rosettes with serrated leaves, and a pair of narrow reciprocal guard bands in rust and ivory keep the edges crisp. This is classic geometric Persian rug drawing, all straight lines and confident right angles.

A Deep Brick Red Palette with Navy, Ivory and Rose

Red is the governing color, but it is a layered red rather than a flat one. The field reads as a warm brick and terracotta that shifts toward madder rose where the light catches the pile, with faint tonal variation running across the width, the natural signature of hand-dyed wool. Against that ground the border and medallion outlines go deep navy, almost black in the shadows of the close-up photographs. Ivory does the structural work: it outlines the medallion, fills the 4 corner spandrels and picks out the reciprocal guard stripes, which gives the eye somewhere bright to rest. Inside the medallion there is a surprising amount of soft cornflower blue, and the rosette itself moves through pale rose, salmon and mustard gold. Scattered through the field you will find small touches of forest green, saffron and pale blue in the fill motifs. Overall the rug sits firmly in the red and burgundy family while reading warm and multi-toned in a furnished room.

Heriz Origin and Weaving Quality

Heriz is a cluster of weaving villages east of Tabriz in northwest Persia, spread below the slopes of Mount Sabalan. The water there runs mineral-rich, and the local sheep grow a wool famous for its toughness and high lanolin content, which is why a Heriz takes a burnish rather than a bald spot over decades of traffic. Weavers in these villages work from memory and from village templates rather than a knot-by-knot city cartoon, which is exactly why the drawing comes out angular: curves are resolved into steps and straight runs. Village Heriz weaving usually sits below 200 knots per square inch, and that is by design, since a slightly coarser knot on a heavy wool pile is what makes the rug so durable. This piece shows the traits collectors look for: even knotting front to back, tight cotton warps, original flat-woven ends and firmly overcast side cords, and a pile with no thinning anywhere across nearly 13 feet of length.