9'9" x 14'9" Persian Kerman Rug | Sarouk Floral Medallion | Red Field with Ivory and Navy Borders

This is a room filling Persian Kerman measuring 9'9" x 14'9", woven in the Sarouk manner with a deep red open field, a single ivory and navy medallion, and a wide navy border packed with roses and curling vine. It is a hand-knotted wool piece on a cotton foundation with a 3/8" pile that still stands full and even across all 4 corners, and the drawing stays crisp from the medallion to the outer guard stripe. At almost 15 feet long it belongs with the genuinely large formats, so if you are comparing it against other oversize Persian rugs, note that this one carries city weaving detail at a size usually filled by coarser village work. Every rug we ship leaves Freeport with a certificate of authenticity recording origin, materials, size and knotting.

Design and Motifs

The layout follows the classic Sarouk floral medallion formula, drawn here with Kerman refinement. A long lobed medallion sits dead center, its navy ground filled with ivory arabesques, and at its heart a small sky blue cartouche holding an 8 petal rosette. Above and below it, tall ivory palmette finials reach into the field. The open red ground is not empty: 6 detached floral sprays of roses, carnations and bud clusters float in mirrored pairs, spaced so the field still breathes. Heavy cusped spandrels in ivory and sky blue anchor the 4 corners, each crowded with leafy scroll and blossom. The main border runs on navy with an alternating rhythm of rose sprays, curled serrated leaves and scrolling vine, interrupted at each corner by a large ivory cloud band rosette. Two ivory guard stripes carrying a repeating tulip and bud vine frame the whole composition, with a thin red outer band closing the edge.

A Deep Red Field with Ivory, Sky Blue and Navy

The field is a saturated cochineal red, warm rather than orange, with the faint tonal movement through the pile that only hand-dyed wool gives. Against it the ivory reads almost cream, slightly golden where the wool catches light, and it does the structural work: the medallion outline, the spandrels, the corner rosettes and both guard stripes. Navy blue provides the weight, filling the medallion ground and the wide main border so the red field looks brighter by contrast. The lift comes from sky blue and soft turquoise, used in the spandrel grounds, in the small center cartouche and scattered through the floral heads. Rose pink appears in the open roses, sage and olive green in the leaves and stems, with tiny touches of gold at the flower centers. It is a full color Persian palette handled with restraint, so the rug stays formal instead of busy.

Kerman: The Weaving Town and the Quality

Kerman sits in the southeast of Persia, a desert city whose weavers have specialized for generations in curvilinear floral drawing, pictorial garden borders and finely graded color. The province supplies unusually soft, long staple wool, which is why a Kerman pile takes dye so cleanly and keeps its sheen after decades on the floor. This piece shows the town's habits plainly: the flowers are drawn as recognizable roses and carnations rather than stylized shorthand, the curved lines of the medallion run smooth with no stepping, and the border corners resolve properly instead of being cut off mid motif, which is the tell of a designed cartoon and a disciplined workshop. The back photograph shows a tight, regular knot across a cotton foundation, with straight selvedges and original ivory fringe at both ends. That combination of fine drawing, honest wool and a true 9'9" x 14'9" footprint is what makes a large Kerman worth buying once and keeping.