9'9" x 12'9" Persian Traditional Rug | Deep Red Floral Medallion | 1980s Wool Pile, Excellent Condition

This is a full room-size Persian floor rug from the 1980s, hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation and still carrying the thick, even pile of a piece that has been stored rather than walked on. At 9'9" x 12'9" it sits squarely in the most useful of all the big formats, sized to cover a dining table with chairs pulled out or to anchor a sofa and two chairs with the front legs on the wool, which is why buyers searching 10x13 Persian rugs keep returning to this scale. The deep red field, navy medallion and burst of orange at the center read as a classic formal Persian floor, and the condition is excellent throughout, with straight sides, intact selvages and clean cotton fringe at both ends. It ships with a certificate of authenticity from Rugs.net.

Design and Motifs

The drawing is curvilinear from end to end. A navy lobed medallion holds a layered orange cartouche and a small rosette at the dead center, with tall palmette pendants running north and south off its tips. The red field around it is not left open: it is filled with a continuous vine system of split leaves, curling cloudband scrolls, eight petal rosettes and small bouquets, each flower worked in a different combination of blue, olive green, ivory and rose so the repeat never looks mechanical. The 4 corners carry navy and orange spandrels that mirror the medallion's architecture in quarter form, framed with a fine ivory outline. The main border is a navy ground carrying large boteh paisleys alternating with leafy palmette cartouches, flanked by an ivory vine guard stripe and two narrow blue floral minor stripes, so the frame has real depth rather than a single flat band.

Color: Deep Red, Navy, Orange and Green

The field is a saturated deep red with a faint cochineal lean, the kind of tone that collectors of red and burgundy Persian rugs look for because it photographs warm but reads as a rich neutral once furniture is on it. Against that ground, the medallion and border use a true dark navy, almost ink at the edges, which supplies the contrast that makes the floral drawing legible from standing height. The orange is the surprise: a clear, almost coral orange in the medallion and in the corner spandrels, picked up again in small flower heads scattered across the field. Olive and bottle green appear in the leaves, with magenta and rose pink in the blossoms and soft ivory in the guard stripes, the vine outlines and the fringe. Four to five distinct blues are in play, from pale sky in the small flowers to the deep border ground, and the close photographs show the wool holding its luster.

Persian Weaving and Workshop Quality

A rug of this size drawn in curved line rather than straight line is workshop weaving, not village weaving. Flowing vines, lobed medallion edges and matched quarter spandrels all require a cartoon drawn in advance and a weaver disciplined enough to follow it across nearly 13 feet without the pattern drifting, and on this piece the medallion sits true to the center with the border corners resolved cleanly rather than cut off. The reverse shows a tight, regular knot with crisp color definition, and the handle is firm without being stiff, which is what a good cotton warp and weft combination gives you. The wool is the usual strength of Persian floor weaving, dense enough to stay upright underfoot and springy enough that footprints do not set. Forty-odd years on, it remains in excellent condition and ready for daily use.