9'9" x 12'8" Persian Bakhtiar Rug | Tribal Medallion on Brick Red Field | Excellent Condition

This is a full room size Persian Bakhtiar, 9'9" x 12'8" of hand-knotted wool on a cotton foundation, with a heavy 3/8" pile that still stands up straight and a clean, even handle from selvage to selvage. It belongs to the classic village medallion group: a single large lobed medallion floating on a brick red ground, ivory and navy drawing running out into every corner, and a wide navy main border carrying palmettes and rosettes. The condition is excellent, the pile depth is consistent across the whole 12'8" length, and the fringes are original. Among 10x13 Persian rugs this is the size most American living rooms actually need, and it ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming the origin, the materials and the hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a broad lobed medallion outlined in ivory, with a small rosette at its heart and eight radiating floral arms that push out into the red ground. Above and below it sit tall pendants tipped with navy palmettes. The four corner spandrels repeat the same vocabulary in reverse, navy grounds filled with ivory scrolling vine, so the eye reads the field as one continuous composition rather than a medallion dropped onto a blank ground. Between those anchors the weaver filled every inch with detached blossoms, serrated leaves, rosettes and small birdlike floral heads in green, salmon, gold and pale pink. The drawing is curvilinear but drawn with the honest stiffness of village work, which is exactly what collectors look for in Persian tribal rugs. The main border carries alternating palmettes and rosettes on navy, flanked by ivory and salmon guard stripes with a running vine.

The Brick Red, Navy and Ivory Palette

Brick red carries the field, a warm tomato red with a faint terracotta undertone rather than the cool blue-reds of city workshops, and it moves gently through the 12'8" length in soft horizontal bands of abrash where the dye lots changed. Deep navy does the structural work: it fills the medallion ground, the four spandrels and the main border, and it holds the whole 9'9" width together visually. Ivory is the outline color, tracing the medallion edge, the vine scrolls and the inner guard stripe, and it is what keeps the red and navy from turning heavy. Inside those three the weaver scattered a full village palette of salmon, apricot, sage green, mustard gold, pale rose and a near-black indigo used for the small leaf forms. Under lamplight the reds deepen and the salmon reads coral; in daylight the ivory lifts and the navy opens up toward true blue.

Bakhtiar Weaving in the Chahar Mahal Villages

Bakhtiar rugs come from the Chahar Mahal villages southwest of Isfahan in western Persia, woven by settled Bakhtiari tribal families who kept their own drawing while borrowing the medallion layouts of the nearby city workshops. The wool from those high grazing grounds is greasy, long-stapled and unusually resilient, which is why a Bakhtiar of this weight stays flat and takes furniture and traffic for generations without going thin. The back of this piece shows an even, tightly packed knot line on a cotton foundation, with no bowing and no repairs, the sign of a competent village loom rather than a quick commercial one. Pieces from this group are among the most practical large Persian rugs you can buy, and a 9'9" x 12'8" in excellent condition with original ends is not a common find.