9'10" x 13'2" Persian Sarough Rug | Red Multicolor Floral Medallion | Excellent Condition

At 9'10" x 13'2" this is a full room-size floral Sarough, the sort of piece that sits under a sofa group or a 10 seat table and finishes the room by itself. It is hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation, with the pile clipped to about 3/8" so the drawing stays crisp and the colors read clean from standing height. The condition is excellent, with even pile across the field, straight sides and original ivory fringe at both ends, as shown in the corner and back photographs. Buyers looking at 10x13 Persian rugs will notice how much finer the flower heads are drawn here than in most village work at this scale. Every rug leaves us with a certificate of authenticity recording the origin, materials and knotting.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a round rosette medallion on a deep navy ground, built out in rings: a many petalled star rosette at the core, an ivory scalloped ring around it, then a band of camel gold cartouches and blue leaf tips that break the circle into points. Out of the medallion run long curling vine arms and serrated leaves, and above and below it sit two upright palmette crowns that give the field its top and bottom axis. The open red ground between those elements is filled edge to edge with small floral sprays, rose clusters, tulip buds and tiny ivory dot flowers, so there is no empty space anywhere. All 4 corners carry large quarter medallions of massed roses on pale blue spandrels, each one a round bouquet in its own right. The main border is a navy ground carrying a scrolling pale blue vine that loops around rosette bunches, flanked on both sides by ivory guard stripes of alternating flower heads and a narrow outer red edge.

Color: Red Field, Navy Core and Pastel Flowers

The field is a true red with a slight cherry cool to it rather than a brick or rust tone, and it stays consistent from end to end with no visible abrash. Against that red the medallion core is a very dark navy blue, almost ink, which is also the ground of the main border, so the eye is pulled from center to edge and back. The relief comes from the pastels: a soft sky blue that fills the corner spandrels and the border vine, ivory and cream outlines around most of the flower heads, rose pink and salmon in the roses, camel gold and mustard in the cartouches and leaf work, and small touches of pale green and sage in the stems. Close up, as in the medallion detail photograph, you can see 8 or more separate shades sharing a single flower, which is what keeps a field this busy from turning muddy. In daylight the overall impression is a warm red rug; under lamp light the blues and pinks come forward and it reads as a multicolor floral.

Sarough Weaving in Central Persia

Sarough is a weaving town in the Markazi district of central Persia, in the same group of villages around Arak that also gave us Mahal and Sultanabad weaving, and it built its name on heavy, tightly packed wool rugs with floral drawing borrowed from the city workshops. Persian Sarough rugs are knotted on a cotton warp and weft with a firm beat-down, which is why they lie flat, resist curling at the corners and take decades of traffic without thinning. This example belongs to the finer end of that tradition: the knot count is high enough to carry curved vine work and individually shaded flower heads rather than the blocky florals of coarser village looms, and the back photograph shows a tight, regular knot face with no slack rows. The wool has the slight sheen that comes from good local fleece and hand spinning, and it has taken the dyes deeply, which is the practical reason a rug like this still looks saturated rather than washed out.