9'11" x 13'3" Persian Sarough Rug | Navy Blue Field, Red Orange Medallion | Excellent Condition

This is a room size piece from the Arak region of central Persia, hand-knotted on a cotton foundation with a 3/8" wool pile that still stands full and even across all 4 corners. At 9'11" x 13'3" it sits squarely in the classic 10x13 proportion, wide enough to carry a dining table with chairs pulled back or to anchor a full seating group without the furniture crowding the border. Buyers who shop 10x13 Persian rugs know how rarely a piece this size arrives in excellent condition with a deep navy field intact, and our Persian Sarough rugs guide explains why these weaves hold up the way they do. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The drawing follows the classic Sarough formula: a large stepped floral medallion set dead center, resolved at its core into an ivory 8 petal rosette with a small cross of navy at the middle, then framed by lobed pendants above and below. Around it the field fills with a dense all over scroll of curling vine, split leaf arabesques and open palmettes, with ivory rosettes and star shaped florets dropped in at regular intervals so the eye always has a resting point. Matching corner spandrels repeat the medallion vocabulary at the 4 corners, which is what keeps a field this busy feeling ordered rather than crowded. The border system runs 5 bands deep: a main red band of alternating palmettes and leafy vine, flanked by sky blue guard stripes of reciprocating scroll, a narrow gold vine stripe, and fine geometric outer stripes that close the whole composition. Along the inner edge sits a run of oval cartouches, a detail you see on better village and workshop pieces and one that shows the weaver was following a properly drafted cartoon rather than improvising.

A Closer Look at the Navy Blue and Red Orange

The field is a genuinely deep navy blue, dark enough at a distance to read almost as ink, and it photographs with a faint aubergine cast under warehouse lighting while showing as true navy in daylight and in the close detail shots. Against it the medallion and the main border carry a warm red orange, the brick toned terracotta typical of madder based dyeing in this region, brighter and more coral in the medallion than in the border, which sits a shade heavier. Three secondary tones do the rest of the work: an ivory that outlines the medallion core, the corner rosettes and the guard stripe scrolls; a soft sky blue that fills the arabesque leaves and one full guard band, cooling the red where the two meet; and a muted gold that appears in the narrow vine stripe and in scattered florets. Slight tonal movement across the navy is normal for hand-dyed wool and reads as depth rather than as a flaw. The overall effect is a rug that grounds a pale room without going flat, and that sits comfortably with wood tones, brass and leather.

Sarough Weaving in Central Persia

Sarough is a village north of Arak in central Persia, in the same weaving belt that produced the Sultanabad and Mahal carpets shipped west in enormous numbers from the late 19th century onward. What separated Sarough from its neighbors was density: the weavers pulled the knots tight, packed the wefts hard and cut the pile relatively low, which is why a Sarough of this size tends to lie flat and take decades of foot traffic without thinning. The wool from the surrounding flocks is springy and takes dye deeply, and the local drawing tradition kept the curvilinear court medallion alive at a village price point, so you get formal workshop style composition on a foundation built for daily use. On this piece the knotting is regular from selvage to selvage, the horizontal lines of the pattern stay true across nearly 10 feet of width, and the ivory cotton fringe and navy selvages are sound with no repair work.