9'4" x 12'9" Persian Heriz Rug | Sherabian Geometric Medallion | Antique Red Field with Ivory Corners

This is the Heriz that decorators keep asking for and rarely find in good condition: a deep antique red field, 4 ivory corner spandrels and a broad angular medallion drawn with real confidence. It is hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation, substantial in the hand, and the pile has settled into an even low nap that reads as honest patina rather than wear. The drawing is tighter and more articulated than average village work, which is why pieces like this one are attributed to the Sherabian weaving name within the Heriz group. At 9'4" x 12'9" it is a true room-size piece, and it ships with our certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a stepped, star-lobed medallion with a small square rosette at its heart, ringed by hooked palmettes and framed above and below by anchor-shaped pendants that reach toward the ends of the field. Around it the field fills with serrated sickle leaves, angular vine scrolls and little blossom heads, every curve translated into straight lines and right angles the way village looms draw them. The 4 corners carry large ivory spandrels packed with their own leaf and palmette drawing, and the main border alternates rosettes with broad angular palmettes on a dark ground. Narrow reciprocal guard stripes and a barber-pole diagonal stripe separate border from field, a detail visible in the corner photographs and one of the marks of a carefully finished piece. Buyers who gravitate toward geometric Persian rugs will recognize the vocabulary immediately.

Color and Patina

The field is an antique red that shifts as you walk around it, brick and terracotta in open ground, warming to rose and soft salmon where the wool has taken the light for years. The medallion picks that salmon up and sets it against a dark aubergine navy that also runs through the main border, giving the whole rug its weight. Ivory is the counterpoint: bright cream in the corner spandrels, thinner ivory outlines tracing leaves and vines across the field so the drawing stays legible against the red. Between them sit olive and sage green in the small rosettes and leaf tips, camel and warm brown in the vine work, and touches of apricot in the palmettes. Gentle abrash, the natural banding that comes from hand-dyed yarn, moves through the field and keeps the red alive rather than flat. It is a palette that sits comfortably with walnut, bronze, cream plaster and worn leather, and it forgives everyday traffic better than any pale rug will. Reading the way these colors have mellowed is part of how to date an Oriental rug.

Heriz Origin and Weaving Quality

Heriz is a cluster of villages east of Tabriz, on the slopes below Mount Sabalan, where mineral-rich water and high pasture produce a famously tough, lustrous wool. That wool is the reason Heriz rugs became the American standard for a floor that has to work: dense, springy, and slow to show traffic. Weaving there is done from memory and a village drawing rather than a full cartoon, which is why the medallion is bold and angular and why no two examples are quite alike. Most village Heriz work sits under 200 knots per square inch, so the achievement is not fineness but scale, proportion and the strength of the line, and this piece keeps its symmetry cleanly across nearly 13 feet. The generous 9'4" x 12'9" footprint places it squarely among the large Persian area rugs that can carry a full seating group without crowding the walls.