9'5" x 13'7" Persian Najafabad Rug | Red Field, Dark Indigo Floral Border | Sarouk Medallion Design

This 9'5" x 13'7" Persian Najafabad rug is a full room-size piece drawn in the classic Sarouk floral medallion format, hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation with a 3/8" pile that still stands full and even from one selvage to the other. Najafabad lies a short drive west of Isfahan, and its weavers built their name on taking city-workshop drawing and putting it into heavy, hard-wearing rugs meant to be lived on rather than admired from a distance. The sides are tight, the fringe is intact, and the color is consistent end to end, which is what earns the excellent condition rating. It ships with a certificate of authenticity, and at this footprint it works the same way our other 10x14 Persian rugs do, holding a sofa, two chairs and a coffee table with all legs on wool.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a deeply lobed navy star medallion with an ivory core, and inside that core sits an 8 petal rosette ringed by small blue and gold palmettes. Slender pendants run off the medallion toward each end, and the red field around it is covered edge to edge with curling vine, feathered lanceolate leaves, rosettes and split palmettes, all drawn with the curved line that separates a city-style layout from village geometry. Ivory spandrels close off the 4 corners of the field with blue arabesque scrollwork, mirroring the medallion in miniature. The wide dark indigo main border carries an alternating run of large palmettes and eight-lobed flower heads joined by a continuous vine, framed on both sides by ivory guard stripes of small flowering buds and a fine sky blue minor stripe. It is the same ordered, repeating discipline that makes Persian Sarouk rugs so easy to furnish around.

Red Field, Dark Indigo Border and the Colors in Between

The field is a true madder red, warm rather than orange, and it reads slightly deeper under lamplight than it does in daylight. Against it the main border is a dark indigo that comes close to black in the shadows and opens up to navy where the light hits the pile, giving the rug a heavy frame that keeps the busy field from drifting. Between those two poles the palette is remarkably varied for a red and blue rug: ivory and cream in the spandrels and guard stripes, a clear sky blue in the medallion petals and vine work, soft sage and olive green in the leaves, camel and old gold in the palmette centers, and small touches of rose and salmon in the border flowers. Those lighter accents are what make the drawing legible across 13'7" of length, and they are also what let this rug sit comfortably with oak floors, cream walls, walnut furniture or leather.

Najafabad Weaving, West of Isfahan

Najafabad is a weaving town roughly 15 miles west of Isfahan in central Persia, and its looms have always worked in the shadow, and the drawing tradition, of that city. Where the finest Isfahan rugs chase knot count on silk foundations, Najafabad took the same cartoons and wove them in sturdy wool on cotton at a medium-fine weave, producing large formats that families actually used. That is exactly what you have here: a well-spun wool pile at 3/8", firm handle, flat lay, and a knot dense enough to hold the curved vine and the fine ivory guard stripes without the pattern blurring. The back tag identifies the type as Najafabad and the piece as a hand-knotted woolen rug, and the weave visible on the reverse is even and regular across the full 9'5" width, the sign of an experienced loom crew working a single cartoon from start to finish.