Antique Heriz Rugs
A hand-knotted wool carpet from the Heriz district of north-west Persia, woven in bold geometric patterns and made in room sizes as hard-wearing floor covering.
What Is A Heriz Rug?
Heriz is a district of villages in north-west Persia, Persian Azerbaijan, weaving hand-knotted wool carpets since the nineteenth century in bold geometric medallion and allover patterns. Much of the output went to the export trade in room-size formats, made to be walked on.
The room-size carpet dominates. "Carpet" appears in 412 of 683 titles on Sellingantiques, against runners at 155 and rugs at 134, and the carpet dimensions cluster tightly around 2.8 to 3.9m long by 2.0 to 2.9m wide. Runners are roughly a fifth of the whole, widths in titles running from 53cm up to about a metre and lengths to 5.34m. Small rugs, including hearth and porch sizes, make up a substantial minority and are rising in what's currently for sale.
Titles are plain and descriptive, often with metric dimensions attached, and the main way one piece is distinguished from another is a sub-district name. Karaja or Karadja turns up in 33 titles and is far more common in live stock than in the archive. Serapi accounts for 23, Bakshaish about ten, with Ahar, Gorevan, Sharabian, Hastrud and Sarab appearing in single figures.
Dates run 1850 to 1950, with two thirds of dated listings falling between 1890 and 1929 and the 1900s alone accounting for 216 of them. That is the decade you are most likely to meet. Both ends are thin: four listings sit in the 1850s, one carpet is dated as late as 1950. Even a clean year often stands in for a dealer's circa, so read a decade as an approximation.
Top And Bottom
The name on the title does most of the work. Plain "Antique Heriz carpet" spreads across the whole middle of the range, while Serapi and Bakshaish attributions dominate the uppermost listings. Those two are uncommon, 23 titles and about ten, yet they account for most of the top. Date pulls the same way: pieces dated 1850 to 1880 sit high, 1930s runners and small rugs at the bottom.
Size sorts the rest. Oversize carpets at 5.42 x 3.81m, 5.75 x 3.69m and 3.29 x 6.26m are top-band, and true room-size holds its ground. Hearth rugs, porch rugs and short runners sit lowest. The exception is width in runners, where unusual narrowness is a selling point in itself, flagged in titles like "Very narrow Heriz runner 257x53cm" and one dealer's capitalised "ONLY 82CM WIDE".
Two other things travel with the higher listings. Colour named as such appears in 28 titles, with superb colour, outstanding colour, soft pastel colours and intense colours concentrated in the upper half. So does country-house wording, which shows up in ten titles and almost always near the top.
Retail Price Guide 2026
Typical UK retail prices for heriz rugs, calculated from the Sellingantiques database of over a million retail prices indexed since 2003. This retail price guide relies exclusively on Sellingantiques data; no external sources or auction records are used, so the figures do not describe the wider market.
The 1900s is the decade used most on Sellingantiques for Heriz rugs, with the 1910s next and the 1920s third.
The Antique Heriz Rugs Glossary
- Roomsize
- A carpet broad enough to furnish a whole room, in this archive typically about 2.0 to 2.9m by 2.8 to 3.9m. "Small roomsize" is dealer shorthand for the shorter end, around 2.8 to 3.0m long.
- Runner
- A long narrow rug for a hall or corridor. Widths recorded in titles go down to 53cm, and lengths run to 5.34m.
- Medallion design
- A central figure dominating the field, named in ten titles, sometimes as star medallion or large medallion. Allover design, in eleven titles, means a repeating pattern with no medallion.
- Ground
- The background colour behind the pattern. Ivory, red, terracotta, salmon and sky blue all appear in titles.
- Serapi
- Trade name for the more finely drawn, often older carpets of the district, and the label attached to several of the largest pieces recorded.
- Wagireh
- A sampler weaving showing pattern elements rather than a finished design. One turns up here, woven as a narrow runner.
Frequently Asked Questions
What size are most Heriz carpets?
The carpets cluster around 2.8 to 3.9m long by 2.0 to 2.9m wide, which is the small-room to room-size band. About 25 titles use the word room or roomsize outright.
Above that sit a handful of oversize pieces, the largest recorded being 3.29 x 6.26m and 3.75 x 5.75m. Below it, small and narrow are the next most common qualifiers, with 60 titles carrying "small".
How old is an antique Heriz likely to be?
The dated field spans 1850 to 1950. Two thirds of dated listings fall between 1890 and 1929.
The 1900s is the single busiest decade with 216 listings, followed by the 1910s and 1920s. Anything from the 1870s or earlier is thin on the ground, and only four listings sit in the 1850s.
What does Serapi mean on a Heriz listing?
Serapi is a trade name for the more finely drawn, often older carpets from the Heriz district. It appears in 23 of 683 titles.
Those listings sit at the top of the sampled range, along with Bakshaish, the other sub-district name that concentrates there.
Are Heriz runners common?
Runners are roughly a fifth of the category, 155 titles. Narrow appears in 33 of them.
Widths recorded go down to 53cm, 62cm, 63cm and 66cm, and titles that insist on narrowness sit well above the ordinary runner band.
Do Heriz rugs come in pairs?
Pairs turn up now and then. Several pairs of Karaja rugs appear, along with a pair of Heriz rugs and a pair of very long runners.
Squarish formats are frequent enough to have their own wording too, with "square carpet" and "square size" both used in titles.
Is anything other than wool floor rugs found?
Almost everything here is wool pile for the floor. The oddities are few and worth naming.
The archive holds a piled mafrash bag panel, a bag face, a wagireh sampler woven as a narrow runner, and one silk-pile rug that appears once across 683 listings.