The Heriz tradition came out of the village workshops of north-west Iran in the late nineteenth century. Where Tabriz workshops produced the curvilinear floral medallion carpets that filled European drawing rooms, Heriz villages produced something rougher and more architectural: bold geometric medallions, large pendants, and angular spandrels drawn straight from village memory rather than from a designer's cartoon. The pattern travelled, and Indian workshops have kept the idiom honest for more than a century.

This piece was hand-woven in India in a Heriz manner over several months by a small team of weavers. Wool was hand-spun, dyed in small batches against a master strike-off, and worked over a cotton foundation. The drawing carries the angular vocabulary of the village original: large central medallion, broad geometric pendants, corner spandrels, and a layered border with rosette repeats. The faded gray-brown palette is in the antiqa idiom, washed and finished to read as a quietly aged piece.

The composition

A central medallion in muted brown sits within a gray ground broken by ivory and rust accents. The geometry is bold rather than fine; the drawing was always meant to be read across a room rather than examined at close range. The borders carry a stepped rosette repeat in soft contrast. The wash gives the surface a pre-aged hand, the way an Heriz of the 1920s might read after fifty years on a hardwood floor.

What you are buying

Antique Heriz carpets of comparable size and condition appear at international auction in the range of $8,000 to $20,000 when they appear at all. This is a new weaving in the same idiom, on the same kind of foundation, with the same wool and the same drawing vocabulary. The rug appreciates with use rather than depreciating; antiqa-finished wool keeps improving through its first decade of foot wear.

The piece in a room

9' x 12' (274 x 366 cm) is drawing-room scale. The rug expects the bulk of a primary bed, a full sectional, or a ten-seat dining table to sit on it. The gray-brown palette pairs with limestone, oak, walnut, brass, and warm white walls. It reads quieter than a saturated red Heriz and is easier to live with day to day in a contemporary interior.

Conservation

Rotate a half turn each spring and autumn so light and traffic age the field evenly. Vacuum weekly on suction, beater bar disengaged. Blot spills with a clean cotton cloth, never rub. A wool-trained conservator should hand-wash the rug every five to seven years. With this care the rug runs sixty to eighty years and outlasts the upholstery placed on it.

Reference

• Medium: hand-woven wool on cotton foundation, antiqa-finished
• Dimensions: 274 x 366 cm (9' x 12')
• Construction: hand-made in the Heriz idiom
• Hands: small team, several months
• Colour: gray and brown
• Origin: India

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