9' x 12'9" Persian Sarouk Mahal Rug | Tomato Red Floral Medallion | Ivory Border | Excellent Condition

This is a full room-size floor piece, 9' x 12'9", hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation with a 3/8" pile that still stands upright and even from one selvage to the other. Persian Sarouk rugs from the Arak district are built for exactly this job: a heavy, tightly packed weave under a soft surface, a tomato red field that carries light across a big room, and an ivory border wide enough to frame the rug without a single break in the drawing. The wool has the slightly glossy handle that comes from good local fleece rather than a chemical wash, and the selvages and both end finishes are original and intact. Condition is excellent with no repairs, no low spots and no overpainting. It ships with our certificate of authenticity confirming origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

A single elongated diamond medallion sits dead center, outlined in ivory and filled with a layered rosette, small paired blossoms and curved teal leaves. Around it the field is worked in the detached spray style that made this design famous: individual floral bouquets, serrated leaves, buds and vase-like stems floating on open ground rather than locked into a rigid lattice, each one drawn slightly differently by hand. Four corner spandrels in a deeper red repeat the medallion vocabulary and then dissolve into the field instead of ending in a hard line. The ivory main border alternates two devices, a stepped star rosette and a broad crowned palmette with pendant stems, and is contained by dark guard stripes of small linked blossoms. That reciprocal rhythm is the signature of the Sarouk and Mahal weaving group, floral and formal in plan but loosely, confidently drawn in execution.

Tomato Red and Ivory Colour Palette

The ground is a warm tomato red with a brick undertone that shifts toward rust where the pile leans away from the light, the kind of gentle abrash you only get from wool dyed in small batches. Against it the medallion reads indigo with an aubergine cast, deepest at its outer edge and lighter where teal and sky blue leaves cut through. The flowers do most of the talking: peach and salmon petals, ivory and cream blossoms, a pale gold here and there, and black-brown outlines that keep every motif legible from across the room. The border flips the balance completely, a clean ivory ground carrying red, indigo, turquoise and apricot devices, which is what stops a rug this size from reading as one solid block of colour. Buyers cross-shopping red Persian rugs should note how bright and clear this red is compared with the darker burgundy tones common in the category.

Sarouk Weaving in the Arak District

Sarouk is a village northwest of Arak in central Persia, at the heart of the old Sultanabad weaving district that also produced the Mahal group. Weavers there work on a cotton warp and weft with a heavy, well-beaten wool knot, which is why these rugs survive decades of real traffic while finer city pieces from softer regions do not. The local fleece is dense and slightly lanolin rich, so the pile compacts rather than sheds and takes on a low sheen with use. Room-size formats like this one were the district's specialty, woven deliberately for large western dining and living rooms, and the plan of the design accounts for furniture: the medallion sits high enough in the visual field to stay readable with a table over it. If you are measuring for a standard 9x12 Persian rug footprint, this piece runs 9 inches longer, which usually means better coverage rather than a problem.