9'9" x 13' Persian Sarough Rug | Red Orange Allover Floral Field | Navy Star Medallion

This is a full room size piece in the classic central Persian idiom: a red orange field carrying an unbroken floral lattice, a navy star medallion floating dead center, and deep blue corner spandrels that frame the whole composition. Hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation with a 3/8" pile, it has the weight and body you expect from good Persian Sarough rugs, and the pile is full and even across all 4 corners. At 9'9" x 13' it sits squarely in the practical 10x13 Persian rug range, large enough to carry a sofa group or a 8 seat dining table entirely on the wool. Every rug ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming it is hand-knotted in Persia.

Design and Motifs

The drawing is curvilinear throughout, with no straight tribal lines anywhere in the field. At the center sits an 8 lobed navy star medallion built around an ivory core and a small yellow centered rosette, ringed by pale blue palmettes and outlined in a fine ivory line that lifts it clear of the red ground. Above and below it run the matching pendants, and the same navy repeats in the 4 corner spandrels so the layout reads as medallion and corners even though the floral lattice never stops. The field itself is a dense allover floral arrangement of serrated leaves, rosettes, lotus palmettes and scrolling vine, each blossom outlined so it stands out against the ground. The border system is generous: a wide navy main band of bold arabesque scroll and paired palmettes, flanked by mid blue floral guard stripes and a small ivory meander, with a narrow ochre check ribbon adding a third rhythm at the edge.

A Red Orange Field Balanced by Two Blues

The ground is a warm red orange, closer to brick and tomato than to burgundy, and it is the color that sets the temperature of a whole room. Against it the weaver worked 2 distinct blues: a dark ink navy used for the medallion, the spandrels and the main border, and a softer mid blue, almost denim, that fills the secondary guard bands and appears again in the leaf work across the field. Ivory does the outlining and shows up as full cream rosettes scattered through the lattice and as the small zigzag line separating the borders. Lesser accents of saffron yellow, soft peach, sage green and a grey brown appear inside individual flower heads, which is what keeps the field from reading as a flat block of red at a distance. The ends finish in plain red kilim with natural ivory cotton fringe, and the outer edge carries a clean red selvedge.

Sarough Weaving in Central Persia

Sarough is a weaving district in the Arak region of central Persia, and its reputation has always rested on 2 things: sturdy construction and formal, workshop-quality drawing. Weavers there knot on a heavy cotton foundation with tightly packed wefts, which is why a Sarough of this scale lies flat, holds its rectangular shape and takes decades of household traffic without the field going thin. The wool from the surrounding highland flocks is springy and takes dye deeply, so the reds stay saturated and the pile keeps its slight sheen after washing. What separates a good Sarough from an ordinary one is whether the curved lines of the vine scroll stay smooth at the turns and whether the medallion is centered and symmetrical against the borders; on this piece both hold up under inspection, corner to corner, including the pendant alignment at each end.