14' x 26' Antique Persian Farahan Rug | Sarough Family | Navy Field | Lychee Red Medallion | Palace Size

This is an antique Persian Farahan of the Sarough family, a palace-size carpet woven roughly 100 years ago in west-central Persia. It measures a full 14' x 26', and across that length it carries a single grand statement: a deep indigo-navy field, almost completely submerged in flowering vinework, holding aloft a lychee-red center medallion with long red pendants reaching toward arched panels at the head and foot. The longer you look at it the more it gives back, which is the test of a carpet drawn by a serious hand rather than copied by rote.

Design and Motifs

The center medallion is a broad, slightly elongated lozenge worked in lychee red and filled with its own miniature garden of palmettes, rosettes, and curling split-leaf tendrils, ringed by a narrow navy outline that snaps it forward off the dark ground. From its top and bottom rise stepped, leafy anchor-shaped pendants that stretch far down the long axis and resolve into a pair of large arched cartouches at each end of the field, so the eye is carried the whole 26 feet rather than stopping at the center. What sets this piece apart is the field around the medallion: rather than a tidy repeating lattice, it is a freely drawn thicket of leafy vines, large serrated palmettes, lotus blossoms, and small birds scattered through the foliage, with the scrollwork swinging in slightly different directions on either side, the lively, hand-drawn asymmetry of a genuine antique village-town weaving. The ivory and cream corner spandrels break the darkness at each corner, each one packed with its own arabesque of vases, palmettes, and fine flower sprays that the close detail shots reveal in full.

Colors and Placement

The palette is built on the classic Farahan contrast of deep indigo-navy against warm lychee red, lifted by ivory and cream in the spandrels and softened with camel, soft green, and pale blue through the flowers and leaves. The reds carry a gentle, banded abrash that moves across the field as the light changes, giving the enormous surface depth and keeping it from ever reading as flat. A century of careful use has mellowed every color into the settled, slightly muted glow that no new rug can imitate. At 14' x 26' this is a true palace carpet, scaled to fill a grand living room, great room, ballroom, or formal foyer and unify the entire floor under one continuous composition, with seating arranged comfortably inside the field and the border framing the room. For a collector it is equally at home shown as a piece of textile art.

Origin and Construction

The Farahan district, near Arak in west-central Persia, produced some of the most sought-after carpets of the 19th and early 20th centuries, and the Sarough family of weavings is counted among its very finest. This piece is hand-knotted in pure wool on a cotton foundation, the firm, flat, durable structure the region is known for, which is exactly why so many Farahan carpets have survived a century of use intact. The wide multi-band border bears this out: a main lychee-red band of alternating palmettes and flowering tendrils, flanked by reciprocal turtle-style minor borders and several fine floral guard stripes in navy and red, all of it framing the field cleanly at this scale. The reverse, visible in the detail photos, shows even, well-packed knotting and the soft, pliable cotton-foundation handle of a genuine antique. The pile is low and even from 100 years of gentle wear, and the rug remains clean, soft, and sound, in good condition and excellent for its age. To go deeper on this weaving tradition, see our guide to Persian Sarough rugs, and browse the full collection of Sarough rugs.