9' x 12' Indo-Heriz Serapi Rug | Dark Blue Field with Rust Medallion | New Hand-Knotted Wool

This 9' x 12' rug is a brand new, hand-knotted wool piece drawn in the Heriz Serapi manner, and it is the sort of room-sized Oriental rug buyers ask for when they want a traditional medallion layout that has never been walked on. The pile is thick and springy, the wool has a healthy sheen under direct light, and the selvedges and fringe are hand finished and still perfectly square, as the corner and roll photos show. Nothing here has been washed down or antiqued: the colors are at full strength, and at 9 by 12 feet it covers a standard seating group or a 10 seat table with margin to spare, which puts it squarely in the most useful of all the 9x12 Oriental rugs we stock. Every rug we ship travels with a certificate of authenticity recording its size, material, design and origin.

Design and Motifs

The layout is the classic Serapi formula and it is drawn with real discipline. A rust 8 sided medallion sits dead center, outlined in ivory and filled with hooked arms, small stars and a tiny caged rosette at its heart, with 4 pale cartouches carrying flat green and cream blossoms set into its shoulders. Stepped anchor pendants run off the top and bottom, and the dark field around the medallion carries serrated leaves, hooked palmettes and angular vine arms that all meet at right angles rather than curves, which is exactly what separates this family from curvilinear city drawing. The 4 corners are filled with large ivory spandrels, each one stepped like a staircase and loaded with split palmettes and bird-like tendrils. The wide rust main border runs a march of lobed rosettes and anchor-shaped vines, framed on both sides by narrow peach guard stripes of teal and red 4 petal flowers, the sort of tight secondary drawing you can see clearly in the border close-up. Collectors who like geometric medallion rugs will recognize how cleanly the ivory outlines hold every shape apart.

A Dark Blue Field Against Rust, Green and Ivory

The field is a deep dark blue that reads nearly black in the overhead shot and opens up to a true inky navy where the light rakes across the pile in the rolled-edge photo. Against it the medallion and the main border are a warm rust, a brick tone with a faint orange cast rather than a cool wine red, and the two are kept from colliding by broad ivory spandrels and cream outlines that act as the whole rug's drawing line. The greens are the quiet pleasure here: a dusty sage in the serrated leaves, a bluish teal in the small border flowers and in the little square at the center of the medallion, plus a soft olive in the vine stems. Supporting shades include salmon and apricot in the guard stripes and cartouches, a pale butter yellow in several rosettes, camel brown in the leaf shading, and small touches of dark charcoal that pin the pattern down. Because the wool takes dye unevenly by a hair from knot to knot, the rust and navy both move slightly across the surface, which gives the rug life instead of a flat printed look.

Origin and Weaving Quality

This rug was hand-knotted in India, which is where most of the world's good contemporary hand-knotted work is now made, and we say that with confidence after decades of buying there. The best Indian workshops weave the Heriz Serapi design on upright looms with a cotton warp and weft and a wool pile, keeping the knot count in the village range that suits an angular pattern: a Serapi drawn too fine loses the bold, blocky authority that makes it work on a floor. You can judge the construction yourself in the folded corner shot, where the back shows even rows, straight sides and no pulled or slack areas across the full 12 foot length. The pile is dense enough to stand up under a dining table and the wool is springy rather than limp, which is the single most reliable sign of a well spun, well washed modern weave. For a buyer who wants the traditional Serapi look in a brand new piece at a sane price, this is the honest version of it, with no restoration history, no low spots and no surprises.