9'10" x 12'6" Persian Heriz Rug | Geometric Star Medallion | Semi-Antique, Rust and Ivory

A semi-antique Heriz in the size most American rooms are actually built for, wide enough at 9'10" to carry a full seating group and long enough at 12'6" to run the length of a dining table with the chairs pulled out. The pile is wool on a cotton foundation, hand-knotted in the villages east of Tabriz, and it has settled into that slightly burnished, lived-with surface that only comes with decades of honest age. Pile depth is even from end to end, the selvedges are sound and the ivory cotton fringe is full on both ends, as the back photograph with the ruler shows. It ships with a certificate of authenticity documenting origin, materials and hand-knotted construction. If you are shopping 10x13 Persian rugs, this is the classic and the benchmark.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a large 8 pointed star medallion built from stepped, straight-line drawing, with an ivory inner rosette, a ring of small paired cypress and leaf forms, and 2 dark navy-black pendants reaching north and south toward the ends. Four heavy spandrels fill the corners in ivory, each one drawn with serrated palmette leaves, hooked vines and small blossoms, and each stepped rather than curved where it meets the field. Between medallion and corners the rust ground is packed with angular vinework, split leaves, rosettes and tiny animal-like figures that the weaver clearly improvised as she went, since the left and right halves do not mirror each other exactly. The main border runs on a near-black ground with alternating palmettes and turtle-style motifs in salmon, olive and ivory, framed by narrow reciprocal guard stripes in blue and rust. It is a textbook piece of the angular vocabulary that makes geometric Persian rugs so easy to live with under furniture.

The Color Story: Rust, Navy Black, Ivory and Olive

The field is a warm terracotta rust, more brick than tomato, and it shifts gently across the width the way a naturally dyed village ground does, reading slightly deeper along one edge and slightly salmon toward the center. Against it the medallion core and the main border sit in a dark navy that photographs close to black, which is where the drawing gets its snap. The corner spandrels and the medallion heart are ivory, almost a soft cream, and they lift the whole field and keep 12'6" of rust from feeling heavy. Working through the field are olive and moss green in the leaves and cypress forms, a dusty light blue in the small rosettes and in one of the guard stripes, plus touches of soft gold and pale apricot. Yellowish olive appears again in the border palmettes, visible clearly in the close-up of the black ground. The overall effect is warm and mellow rather than loud, and it sits comfortably with walnut, oak, leather and brass.

Heriz: Village Weaving Below Mount Sabalan

Heriz is a cluster of villages east of Tabriz in northwest Persia, sitting below Mount Sabalan, and its reputation rests on 2 things: mineral-rich water that gives the local fleece unusual strength, and a drawing tradition that is entirely angular. Weavers there work from memory and from a village template rather than a fully drawn cartoon, which is why a medallion like this one is bold, confidently stepped and never quite symmetrical. Knot count in village Heriz work generally sits under 200 knots per square inch, and that is not a shortcoming; the heavier knot and the tough highland wool are exactly what let these rugs take 60, 80 and 100 years of traffic and still show even pile, as this one does. Turn it over and you can read the weave clearly, tight rows on a cotton warp and weft, the wool still greasy and resilient to the touch. A good Heriz is the rug you buy once and hand down.