9'4" x 12'7" Persian Heriz Rug | Red Field with Ivory Stepped Medallion | Semi-Antique Village Weave

This is a full room-size Heriz in the classic format that made the village weave famous: a deep red field, a broad ivory and brown stepped medallion, and four heavy corner spandrels drawn in the same ivory. The pile is wool on a cotton foundation, knotted by hand with the confident straight-line drawing that Heriz weavers work from memory rather than from a detailed cartoon. It reads as a semi-antique piece, with the softened surface and gently mellowed reds that come from decades of settled dye rather than any chemical wash. The pile is even edge to edge, the selvages and the ivory cotton fringe are intact, and at 9'4" x 12'7" it covers a full seating group or a 10 seat table with room to spare. Every rug we ship carries a certificate of authenticity that records origin, materials and size.

Design and Motifs

The center holds an 8 sided stepped medallion with an ivory ring enclosing a brown and indigo cross-form core, finished top and bottom with hooked pendants that trail small serrated leaves into the field. Around it the field is filled with angular palmettes, hooked vine arms and barbed leaf forms that break every curve into a straight line, which is the signature of geometric Persian rugs from this district. The 4 corners carry large ivory spandrels packed with rosettes, small animal and bird figures and stepped hooks, and two small cartouche-shaped devices sit on the long axis above and below the medallion. The main border is a dark ground of alternating diamond rosettes and turtle palmettes, framed by narrow guard stripes of running vine that keep the heavy field in check.

Color: Brick Red, Ivory and Indigo

The field is a warm brick red that shifts between a cooler rose and a deeper madder tone as the light moves across the pile, a natural abrash that flat photography tends to flatten out. Against it the ivory of the medallion ring and the corner spandrels reads almost cream, warmed slightly with age, and it is that contrast that carries the drawing from across a room. The outlining is done in indigo and near-black, which sharpens every step and hook, while camel brown and a soft olive fill the medallion core and the larger palmettes. Small touches of rose, terracotta and pale blue appear inside the rosettes and the animal figures. Anyone shopping red Persian rugs for a room with walnut or oak floors will find this one of the easier pieces to place, since the dark border grounds the red rather than letting it shout.

Woven in the Heriz Villages of Northwest Persia

Heriz is a cluster of villages east of Tabriz, on the slopes below Mount Sabalan, where the mineral-rich water and the local grazing produce a wool that is coarse, glossy and famously tough. Weavers there work on a cotton warp and weft with a heavy beat, so a Heriz of this age still sits flat and takes traffic without thinning. The drawing is village work rather than workshop work: bold, angular and slightly asymmetrical from side to side, which is exactly what collectors look for in an older piece. Knot counts in these villages are typically modest, and the value sits in the wool quality, the dye and the boldness of the pattern rather than in fineness. Among large Persian rugs, a well-preserved semi-antique Heriz in this size remains one of the most useful and most durable things you can put on a floor.