10'1" x 12'10" Persian Mashad Rug | Signed Red Floral Medallion | Excellent Condition

This 10'1" x 12'10" Mashad came out of northeast Persia in excellent condition, with a full 3/8" wool pile that still carries its original sheen across the red field. The weaver signed it, putting his name in a small woven cartouche at one end of the field, and in Mashad a signature nearly always means a named town workshop rather than a village loom. Among 10x13 Persian rugs this is the practical format for a real dining table or a full seating group, and it reads as a textbook hand-knotted Persian Mashad rug: one grand medallion, a densely drawn floral field, and a wide navy main border. It ships with a certificate of authenticity stating origin, materials, size and construction.

Design and Motifs

The center is built in rings: a small multicolored rosette inside a sky blue 8 petal star, set on a burnt orange ground, framed by a navy star medallion with ivory palmettes pushing out from each point. Slender pendants run off the medallion toward each end of the rug, and the 4 corners carry ivory spandrels filled with curling vine and blossom. Across the rest of the field the drawing never stops: palmettes, serrated leaves, rosettes and fine tendrils laid out in a balanced all over repeat that keeps its symmetry from side to side. The wide main border alternates large navy ground panels of facing palmettes and leaves, each separated by an ivory floral reserve, and that band sits between ivory vine guard stripes and narrow outer bands of red and blue. It is curvilinear city drawing, with every stem turning cleanly instead of breaking into angles.

A Deep Tomato Red Field With Sky Blue and Orange at the Center

The field is a warm tomato red that leans brick where the light rakes across the pile, and it is the anchor for everything else, which is why this piece sits comfortably with other red Persian rugs in a traditional room. Against that red, the medallion is the cool note: pale sky blue petals, mid blue outlines and a burnt orange halo that lifts the whole center. Ivory does the structural work, outlining the spandrels, the border reserves and hundreds of small blossoms so the pattern stays legible rather than muddy. Secondary colors fill in the detail at close range, with rose pink buds, moss and bottle green leaves, soft camel and brown, and dark navy to brown black outlines that give each flower its edge. The main border reads navy from across the room and opens up into blue, ivory and coral once you stand over it, and the ends finish in plain red with ivory fringe.

Mashad, Khorasan, and the Weave of a Signed Town Piece

Mashad is the capital of Khorasan in northeast Persia, a pilgrimage city with a long commercial weaving trade and the looms wide enough to take a room size rug like this one in a single piece. Khorasan wool is the reason these rugs feel the way they do: long stapled, slightly glossy and resilient, it takes madder reds beautifully and holds a 3/8" pile without matting underfoot. The weave here is typical town work, tight and even on a cotton foundation, dense enough to carry the fine vine work and the small rosettes in the border without losing their shape, and consistent from selvage to selvage across more than 12 feet of length. The signed cartouche places it with a workshop that was willing to stand behind the piece, and the back shows straight, regular knot rows with no waviness, which is what keeps a rug this size lying flat for decades.