7'11" x 11'4" Persian Sarough Rug | Royal Navy Field, Huge Ivory Star Medallion, Ruby Red Border | Semi-Antique

The medallion on this rug is nearly 4 feet across. It is an ivory 16-point star with a scalloped skirt of ruby and chartreuse palmettes, and it sits on a royal navy field so open and so deep that the medallion seems to float on it, with a fan of floral sprays radiating out from its edge like light. This 7'11" x 11'4" Persian Sarough was woven about 50 years ago in wool on a cotton foundation at 180 to 200 knots per square inch, and it has never been on a floor: the pile is full and even edge to edge, the ivory cotton fringes are clean, and the navy has the settled depth only decades of age give to wool. For the background on the town and its designs, see Persian Sarough Rugs Explained. A certificate of authenticity from Rugs.net accompanies the rug.

Design and Motifs

The medallion is built from the center out. An 8-point ruby star with a powder blue core and gold petals sits in the very middle, ringed by a powder blue disc filled with small salmon and ivory flowers; around that, 8 large salmon and peach palmettes edged in brown and olive point outward like the petals of a lotus, and the whole is enclosed in the ivory star itself, a 16-point form whose surface is covered with ruby arabesques, chartreuse split leaves and brown vines so that no part of the ivory is left plain. The star's points end in ruby and blue palmette tips, and a scalloped ivory apron of chartreuse and ruby leaves runs around the outside. From the medallion a halo of detached floral sprays spreads across the navy in every direction, each one a bouquet of small blossoms, buds and leaves in salmon, ivory, chartreuse and blue on brown stems, growing smaller as they move away from the center. A large lobed pendant cartouche in ivory, ruby and powder blue hangs from the medallion at top and bottom, and beyond each pendant a small bouquet closes the axis. The 4 corners of the field are cut by peach cream spandrels with a scalloped inner edge, each one holding a powder blue and brown arabesque cartouche surrounded by ruby and chartreuse scrolling leaves. An ivory inner guard with a running vine of blue and red blossoms frames the field, followed by the ruby main border, which alternates large ivory and gold lotus palmettes with hooked boteh-shaped arabesques in ivory, chartreuse and blue on a continuous vine, and an ivory outer guard with the same blossom vine and a navy selvage complete the frame.

Colors of This Navy and Ivory Sarough Rug

The field is a royal navy, brighter and bluer than the midnight navy of a Nain or Kashan, and because so much of it is left open it reads as a single saturated block of blue with the pile direction showing as a sheen from one end and a matte depth from the other. The medallion and the corner spandrels are the light in the composition: the medallion a warm ivory cream, the spandrels a peach cream a shade warmer and pinker, so that the two do not compete. The main border is a ruby red, clear and slightly cool, with a raspberry cast under lamplight, and the same ruby returns inside the medallion and in the arabesques of every spray. Between those three grounds the weaver used a powder blue for the medallion disc and the spandrel cartouches, a chartreuse yellow-green that is unusual on a Persian rug and gives the leaves their brightness, a salmon and a peach for the palmettes, a mustard gold for the flower centers and border lotuses, an olive and a moss green for the smaller leaves, and a warm brown for every stem and outline. On the back the colors sit a shade lighter with no bleeding, and the knot rows are even and close.

Sarough Weaving and the Medallion Design

Sarough is a village north of Arak in west central Persia, and the name has come to cover the best work of the whole Arak region: cotton foundations, soft, dense wool pile, and floral designs drawn with a curve rather than a step. The town's most famous product is the open-field medallion rug, where a large central form floats on plain ground scattered with detached sprays, and the version here, with a star medallion this size on a navy ground, is the grand format of that design, woven for a formal room rather than a hallway. At 180 to 200 knots per square inch the drawing is fine enough for the small flowers inside the sprays to read as individual blossoms while the pile stays thick enough for decades of daily use, and a 50-year-old example that has never been walked on is as close to a new Sarough of that period as a buyer will find. Among 8x11 Persian rugs it is a piece for a living room or dining room where the medallion can sit clear of the furniture and be seen whole.