9'8" x 12'3" Persian Sarouk Rug | Red Field with Navy Medallion | Semi Antique Village Weave

Laid out flat, this rug reads first as one clean sweep of red with a single navy medallion holding the center, which is exactly the balance the best Persian Sarouk rugs are known for. It measures 9'8" x 12'3", a true room-size piece that sits under a full sofa and chair group with the front legs on the wool, and it belongs with the large Persian rugs rather than the accent sizes. The pile is 3/8" wool on a cotton foundation, worn down evenly over the years to that low, slightly polished surface a semi-antique develops and a new rug cannot fake. Condition is excellent, with full even pile corner to corner, straight sides and original hand-tied fringe. A certificate of authenticity is included with purchase.

Design and Motifs

The center is a layered diamond medallion: an ivory cartouche core wrapped around a small red quatrefoil with four tiny palmette lobes, set inside a navy ground packed with rosettes, star flowers and a fine lattice of stems. Top and bottom, two matching pendants step off the medallion in navy and ivory, each crowned with a small red bud. Around all of it the drawing opens up and the red field is left almost bare, carrying only a scatter of thin flowering sprays that lean toward the center. The four corner spandrels are the showpiece: cornflower blue grounds filled with curling split-leaf arabesques in ivory, olive and apricot, edged by a scalloped ivory outline that traces the shape of the open field. The main border runs navy with alternating ivory teardrop cartouches, each holding a red and blue blossom, separated by rose-red flowerheads and green leaf sprigs. Ivory guard stripes with small diamonds and hooked leaves close the composition on both sides, and a narrow red outer edge finishes it.

A Deep Red Field Framed in Navy and Ivory

The field is a warm true red with a faint tomato cast where the light hits the pile straight on, and the low nap makes it shift a little from one end of the rug to the other, the way good aged wool does. Against it the navy is nearly black at the medallion core and in the main border, which is what gives the piece its contrast and lets the ivory read as brightly as it does. Ivory does the drawing work: the medallion cartouche, the arabesque scrolls through the spandrels, the guard stripes and the fringe. Between those three anchors sit the secondary tones, a soft cornflower to periwinkle blue filling the corner grounds, olive and forest green in the leaves, apricot and rust in the palmettes, and a dusty rose pink in the smaller border blossoms. It is a classic red and navy palette, so it settles easily into rooms built on wood, leather, brass and cream, and it is one of the safest choices among red and burgundy Persian rugs for a formal living or dining room.

Sarouk Weaving in Central Persia

Sarouk is a village north of Arak in Markazi province, in the middle of Persia, and its weavers built a reputation on two things: heavy, tightly packed Persian-knotted wool and a formal medallion drawing borrowed from the city workshops but simplified for village looms. That is what you have here. The back shows straight, regular knot rows on a cotton warp and weft, with the weft beaten down hard enough that the rug has real weight and lies dead flat without a pad fighting it. The wool from this region is long-stapled and greasy with lanolin, which is why the surface takes on sheen rather than fuzz as it wears, and why Sarouk pieces from the mid-century are still in service in family houses across America a lifetime after they were bought. At 9'8" x 12'3" with even pile and honest color, this is a rug meant to be walked on for another generation, not retired to a wall.