9'9" x 14' Persian Abadeh Rug | All Over Herati Fish Design | 1980s Wool Pile

This is a room-filling Persian Abadeh from the 1980's, hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation and still carrying a full, even pile with no thin spots anywhere across its 9'9" x 14' surface. The weave is the honest, tightly packed village work Abadeh is known for: heavy enough to sit flat without a pad, fine enough to hold a small repeating pattern cleanly from one end of the field to the other. At this scale it works as a single anchor under a full seating group or a long dining table, which is exactly why the 10x14 Persian rug format stays in demand. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming it is genuinely hand-knotted in Persia.

Design and Motifs

The field is a strict all over Herati design, the pattern most collectors know as mahi, or fish. Each unit is a small rosette set inside a diamond of cream vinework, with 4 curved lanceolate leaves turning around it like fish circling a pool, and the units repeat in perfect register across the whole 14 feet. Between them the weaver has dropped 8 petal rosettes and tiny stepped hooks that keep the repeat from reading as mechanical. The main border is a wide navy band of hooked palmettes and rigid stems alternating with round ivory and red medallion flowers, flanked on both sides by narrow reciprocal guard stripes in gold and cream. A plain red outer band and a broad red selvage frame the whole thing, and the ivory cotton fringe at both ends is full and intact.

A Field of Madder Red, Navy and Green

The ground is a warm madder red that shifts gently between a deeper brick tone and a lighter salmon cast depending on how the light crosses the pile, natural abrash from hand-dyed wool rather than any fade. Against it the drawing is carried almost entirely in ivory and soft gold, which is what gives the field its lace-like look from standing height. Deep indigo navy does the heavy work: it fills the rosette centers, outlines the diamonds and then takes over completely in the main border, so the eye reads a bright red field inside a dark frame. Sage and olive green appear in the small leaves and in the leaf pairs at the rosette centers, scattered densely enough to cool the red without competing with it. Touches of pale blue-grey and a dark aubergine show up in the border flowers, and the wool holds a clear sheen in the close-up photographs.

Abadeh: Weaving in the Fars Highlands

Abadeh is a highland town in Fars province, on the old road between Isfahan and Shiraz, and its weavers sit between those two traditions: the disciplined drawing of the city workshops to the north, the tough wool and geometric instinct of the tribal south. Local flocks give a dense, slightly coarse fleece that takes dye brilliantly and wears for generations, and Abadeh looms are strung on cotton and beaten down hard, which is why pieces from this town keep their shape at large sizes where lighter weaves ripple. Producing a 9'9" x 14' Abadeh in a fine repeating Herati takes the better part of a year on a wide loom, with 2 or 3 weavers working side by side from the same cartoon, and the accuracy of the repeat across this field tells you the team knew the pattern by heart.