9' x 12' Antique Persian Sarouk Rug | 1930s All-Over Floral Sprays | Excellent Condition

This is a 1930s room-size Sarouk in the classic proportion collectors look for, a true 9x12 Persian rug with a heavy 3/8" wool pile still standing evenly across the whole field. Roughly 90 years of use have polished the wool rather than worn it, and the surface carries the low sheen that only old hand-spun Sarouk fleece develops. Handled side by side with newer weavings, the difference in wool quality is immediate. Like all antique Persian Sarouk rugs we import directly, this piece ships with a certificate of authenticity documenting origin, age, materials and construction.

Design and Motifs

There is no enclosed medallion here. The field is drawn as an open red ground scattered with detached floral sprays, the drawing style that made this weaving group famous in American homes between the wars. At the center a single large rosette sits inside a ring of blossoming stems, and from it the pattern mirrors outward along both axes: tall flowering shrubs, curved serrated leaves, clusters of small 5 petal blossoms, and pairs of footed vases holding bouquets, visible clearly at both ends of the rug. Between them run curling vines and small bird-like leaf forms that give the field its constant movement. The main border is a deep indigo band of alternating palmettes and upright flowering sprigs, held between narrow gold guard stripes of running blossom and leaf. Every repeat is hand-drawn rather than traced, so no two sprays match exactly, which is precisely what separates a woven original from a printed or machine-made copy.

Antique Red, Indigo Blue and Gold

The field is a warm antique red, closer to brick and tomato than to burgundy, and it shifts gently under changing light the way naturally dyed madder wool always does. Against it the design is carried almost entirely in blue: a dark indigo for the outlines, stems and border ground, and a brighter mid blue for the petals and leaf bodies, so the flowers read at two depths instead of one. Gold is the third voice, used for the guard stripes and for the bright saffron leaf blades that flash through the bouquets and keep the palette from going heavy. Supporting tones appear in smaller quantity: soft olive and sage green in the foliage, cream and ivory in the flower centers and vase bodies, and small touches of rust and tan. The overall effect in a room is warm and saturated, the red carrying the floor while the blue borders frame it.

Sarouk Weaving in Central Persia

Sarouk is a village in the Arak district of central Persia, in the old Sultanabad weaving region, and its looms have always been known for weight rather than fineness. The knots sit tight on a cotton foundation, the wefts are beaten down hard, and the pile is left thick, which is why 90 year old examples like this one still have body underfoot instead of a thin, tired handle. The wool from this district is long-stapled and greasy, so it takes madder red and indigo deeply and burnishes rather than dulls with traffic. Pieces woven in the 1920s and 1930s with this open floral spray drawing were made for export and are the ones that survive best today, and the weave, dye behavior and pile depth are exactly the evidence used to date an antique rug. Everything about this example, from the hand-spun yarn to the slight side-to-side variation in the field color, places it firmly in that period.