9'10" x 12'5" Persian Bakhtiari Rug | Tribal Star Medallion | Dark Brown & Ivory Wool

This is a full room size Bakhtiari measuring 9'10" x 12'5", hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation and finished with a dense 3/8" pile that still stands upright across the whole field. The drawing is village work of the confident kind: a pale ivory and salmon star medallion anchoring a deep brown and navy ground that is packed corner to corner with flowers, palmettes and serrated leaves. It reads dark and formal from across a room, then opens up into dozens of small colors as you walk onto it. Condition is excellent, with even pile, straight sides and full original fringe, which is unusual for a piece this size among large Persian rugs. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming the origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

At the center sits an 8 point star medallion outlined in ivory, with a small olive and rose pendant at its core and hooked finials reaching top and bottom. Around it the field spreads out in a broad floral lattice: large stepped palmettes, curled serrated leaves, rosettes and little eight petal stars, all outlined in ivory so the pattern stays legible against the dark ground. The 4 corner spandrels repeat the medallion vocabulary at a larger scale and break the field into the classic quartered layout. The main border carries alternating shield palmettes and turtle forms on a brown and navy ground, framed by narrow rosette and vine guard stripes and a fine reciprocal outer stripe. Drawing is angular rather than curvilinear, which is exactly what you want in geometric rugs of this tradition, and the small asymmetries between the two halves are the mark of a rug drawn from memory rather than a printed cartoon.

Color Palette

The ground alternates between a deep chocolate brown and a near black navy blue, the two shading into one another across the field so the surface never looks flat. Over that base sit warm mid tones of rust, terracotta and a soft salmon pink that carries most of the floral drawing, with touches of camel, mustard gold, olive and a muted slate blue scattered through the smaller flower heads. Ivory does the structural work: it outlines the medallion, the spandrels and the main border, and it is what keeps a very dark rug from reading as a solid block. The border ground is the darkest note in the piece, which pushes the brown field forward visually. Under warm lamplight the rust and salmon come up strongly and the whole rug reads considerably warmer than it does in flat daylight, as the closer floor photograph shows. Practically, a brown and navy ground this deep hides traffic better than almost any other palette.

Origin and Weave

Bakhtiari rugs come from the Chahar Mahal district southwest of Isfahan, woven in villages such as Shahr Kord and Saman by settled families of the Bakhtiari confederation, a people who historically migrated with their flocks between the Zagros highlands and the lowland winter pastures. That background matters because the wool is their own: high altitude fleece, springy, long staple and naturally high in lanolin, which is why these pieces wear for generations under furniture. The weave here is a sturdy symmetrical knot on a cotton warp and weft, beaten down firmly, with the back showing clean, regular knot rows and crisp color changes. It is village weaving rather than city workshop weaving, and that is the appeal: heavier, bolder and more honest than a formal urban carpet, which is why collectors of tribal rugs keep coming back to Bakhtiari work in room sizes like this one.