What is a Heriz rug?
A Heriz rug is a hand-knotted village carpet woven in the Heriz district of northwest Iran, recognized by its oversized geometric medallion, earthy reds and rust tones, and exceptionally durable mountain wool. Heriz pieces are village weaving — coarser knot than workshop Tabriz, with strong structural integrity.
What is a Heriz rug?
The bold village geometric of northwest Iran.
Heriz is a small town in the Iranian province of Azerbaijan, about 70 kilometers east of Tabriz, surrounded by villages that have woven rugs together as a regional tradition since the 19th century. Heriz district pieces are village weaving — coarser knot count than workshop Tabriz, drawn from memory rather than from a cartoon, and built to be walked on for generations.
The defining trait is durability. Heriz wool comes from Mt. Sabalan flocks, exceptionally hard-wearing and rich in lanolin. Knot counts run 60 to 120 per square inch, and the foundation is cotton warp with wool weft — producing the densest, most structural village Persian on the market.
Village weaving for the American century.
Heriz district weaving in its recognizable form dates to the mid-19th century, when village looms scaled up production to serve the great Persian export boom. The earliest pieces — what dealers now call Serapi — have a softer, more open drawing, more subtle palette, and finer wool than the later Heriz. They are among the most collected antique village Persians in the world.
From roughly 1900 through the 1930s, Heriz villages produced room-size and palace-size rugs at scale for the American market — the rust-and-rose-medallion Heriz that fills great American living rooms and dining rooms still today. Heriz weaving continues actively in the 21st century, still on village looms, still in the same wool, still in the same drawing tradition.
How a Heriz is built.
A Heriz is village weaving — knotted from memory and from a stencil rather than a designer’s cartoon, on a heavy cotton warp with wool weft. Knot count runs 60 to 120 per square inch using the asymmetric Persian knot. Construction is built around structural durability: heavy foundation, hard-wearing pile, and tightly wrapped wool selvedges that hold the edges of the rug under foot traffic.
The pile is dense Mt. Sabalan wool with a slight sheen, vegetable-dyed in the iconic Heriz palette: madder root for the rust-red field, indigo for the navy and pale-blue corners, walnut hull for the deep brown, undyed cream for ivory. The whole rug has a sun-baked, earthy quality.
How to identify a Heriz.
- Design
Oversized angular medallion in the center, with bold geometric corners. The drawing is architectural rather than floral — straight lines, blocky palmettes, big shapes.
- Palette
Earthy reds, rust, terracotta, and copper as the field; ivory or pale blue corners; navy borders. The whole rug has a warm, sun-baked quality.
- Border
Main border of turtle-and-palmette or angular vine, flanked by two or three guard borders. Bold drawing matches the field.
- Pile
Medium pile, dense wool, slight sheen. Tougher and more lustrous than other village Persians. Built to be walked on for a hundred years.
- Fringe
Cotton fringe at the ends, often knotted. Edges (selvedges) are wool-wrapped and structural; you can see them clearly on a well-made Heriz.
Four variants you will see.
Heriz pieces are almost always woven at room or palace scale: 8×10, 9×12, 10×14, and up to 14×24. Scatter sizes are rare. The four primary district variants:
Antique Heriz
Late-19th to early-20th c. The most prized; great American collections still hunt these.
Serapi
Finer, earlier Heriz district pieces (late 19th c.). Looser drawing, more subtle palette.
Workshop Heriz
Contemporary village weaving. Classic geometric medallion, hardy wool.
Bakshaish
Adjacent village; finer, often abrash-rich, with a tribal medallion.
Caring for a Heriz rug.
Heriz rugs are hand-washed by our master artisan, never machine-cleaned. The dense Sabalan wool and earthy vegetable palette take a measured hand-wash beautifully — they were built for it. Antique Heriz and Serapi pieces receive the antique wash, calibrated to the dye chemistry of the period. See the full Persian process on our Persian rug cleaning page.
Closest cousins to a Heriz.
Three Persian traditions every Heriz collector should know.
Tabriz
Workshop weaving from the same Azerbaijan province; the technical counterpart to Heriz village work.
Read the Tabriz guideSarouk
Village weaving from west-central Iran; the American-market floral cousin to the Heriz geometric.
Read the Sarouk guideBijar
Kurdish village weaving; the densest, heaviest Persian — built like a Heriz, but denser.
Read the Bijar guideLetters from across the Northeast.
A few of the rugs we've cared for — and the families who trusted us with them.
“They returned an heirloom Tabriz — the colors look exactly as my grandmother described them.”
“A 1920s Heriz I thought was beyond saving came back better than the day my parents bought it.”
“Our clients trust us with eight-figure homes. Horizon is the only atelier I send their rugs to.”
More from Horizon.
Other ateliers, every service we offer, and the rest of our story — a few directions to explore.
Bring us your Heriz.
Antique, Serapi, workshop, or Bakshaish — whichever Heriz district piece you own, we hand-wash with the process appropriate to its construction. Complimentary pickup from Manhattan, the Hamptons, Westchester, Greenwich, and Stamford.
By hand · By the Cohen family · By appointment