9'2" x 12'1" Persian Sarouk Rug | Mohajeran Quality All Over Floral | 1930s Antique

This is a 1930s room size Sarouk of the quality collectors call Mohajeran: heavy hand-spun wool, a deep berry red field, and drawing that stays crisp after 90 years of use. The pile is still full and even across all 12 feet of length, the ends and sides are original, and the wool has developed the low waxy sheen that only decades of walking and washing produce. Of all the classic 9x12 antique weavings, this is the one that anchors a formal room without shouting, and pieces of this age in this condition are getting genuinely hard to replace. Rugs.net imports directly, and every rug ships with a certificate of authenticity. If you want the background before you buy, our guide to Persian Sarough rugs covers what separates workshop Mohajeran weaving from the ordinary trade goods of the same decade.

Design and Motifs

There is no central medallion here. The field carries the classic detached floral spray layout: bouquets, urn shaped blossom clusters and curling serrated leaves scattered in mirrored repeats across the open red ground, each group drawn separately and linked only by thin blossoming vines. Look closely at the center and you find a large lobed cartouche of navy leafwork with a small 8 petal rosette floating above it, flanked by saffron gold leaves that arc out like feathers. The spacing is what marks the better Sarouk workshops: every spray breathes, nothing crowds the corners, and the 4 quadrants balance without being mechanically identical. Three borders frame the work. The wide navy main band runs a rhythm of rose and coral rosettes with pale green leaves and small vase forms, and it is fenced on both sides by a saffron gold guard stripe of tiny rosettes that reads almost as a line of light against the dark ground.

A Berry Red Field Against Indigo and Gold

The field is a true berry red with a raspberry cast, deeper and cooler than the brick reds of village weaving, and it shifts from cherry to wine depending on which direction you stand and how the light falls on the pile. Against it the drawing is almost entirely dark indigo navy, so dark in the leaves and vines that it reads black until you get close and the blue separates out. The saffron gold is the third voice, used for the leaf scrolls, the vine arcs and both guard stripes, and it is the color that keeps the rug from going heavy. Smaller quantities of sage green, soft aqua, coral, rose pink and warm ivory appear inside the flower heads and along the border rosettes, and that scatter of minor colors is what gives an antique its depth. The outer selvage and the narrow inner line pick up a brighter red that frames the whole composition cleanly.

Sarouk Weaving and the Mohajeran Standard

Sarouk sits in the Arak district of west central Persia, the region that also produced Mahal and Sultanabad weaving, and Mohajeran is the village whose output set the top of the Sarouk grade. Those weavers used denser hand-spun wool, a heavier beat and finer drawing than the surrounding workshops, which is why Mohajeran pieces from the 1920s and 1930s survive in service while lighter contemporaries wore out. You can read the age in the back of this one: an even cotton foundation, hand-spun weft, and the slightly irregular knot line that machine-era production never shows, all discussed in our guide on how to date an oriental rug. At 9'2" x 12'1" it falls squarely into the most useful proportion in the trade, and buyers comparing it against other 9x12 Persian rugs will find very few genuine 1930s examples still carrying this much pile.