10'1" x 14'3" Persian Kashan Rug | Red Floral Medallion | Signed Cartouche

This is a full room-size persian kashan rug in the classic town formula: a deep red field, a navy lobed medallion, ivory spandrels, and a wide navy border that frames the whole piece. The weaver signed the work in a small cartouche woven into the top border, which is something a village copy never carries and a workshop piece often does. The pile is hand-knotted wool on a cotton foundation, cut low enough that the drawing of every palmette and vine stays crisp, and the back shows tight, regular rows with clean color separation. At 10'1" x 14'3" it covers a formal living room or a 10 seat dining table with all chairs pulled back, and it sits comfortably among oversize Persian rugs that anchor a room on their own. Condition is excellent with even pile and full, original ends. Every rug we ship carries a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The center is a stepped, lobed medallion in navy with a small ivory cartouche at its core, and inside that a light blue rosette with an 8 petal center. Above and below the medallion sit matching pendants, each finished with a navy palmette finial that reaches into the open field. The field itself is never empty: fine curling vines carry rosettes, serrated leaves, single stem carnations and shield palmettes in a balanced all-over arrangement that mirrors perfectly along both axes. The 4 corners carry ivory spandrels filled with the same vine work at reduced scale, so the eye reads the medallion and the corners as one drawing. The border system runs 7 bands deep: a main navy band of alternating rosettes and turning palmettes, flanked by light blue and ivory guard stripes with running floral scroll, and a final narrow outer stripe that keeps the whole composition tight. The curved line work through the vinery is the tell of proper Kashan drawing, drafted on a cartoon rather than improvised.

The Color: Madder Red, Navy and Ivory

The field is a true madder red, warm and slightly blue-toned rather than orange, and it shifts between a deeper wine and a brighter crimson depending on which way the pile lies under the light. Against it the border and medallion read as a near black navy, which is what gives the rug its depth from across a room. The relief comes from ivory: the medallion core, the spandrels, the guard stripes and the outlining of individual flowers are all drawn in a soft cream that has warmed to the color of old paper. Scattered through the vinery are light sky blue and mid indigo petals, a muted gold in the palmette centers and border rosettes, soft sage and olive green in the leaves, and small touches of terracotta and rose. The close-up of the signature cartouche shows how clean the dye lots are, with a light blue guard stripe and a green panel reading clearly next to the red without any bleed. Fringe and selvedge are ivory white.

Kashan: The Weaving Town and the Quality of the Weave

Kashan sits in central Persia, north of Isfahan, and its looms trace back to the Safavid court workshops that produced some of the most copied carpet designs in the world. The town is known for soft, lustrous local wool and for the exact formula this rug follows: red field, navy lobed medallion, ivory spandrels. It is also the design most Americans have seen without knowing its name, since when you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. The weave here is a fine, even Persian knot on a cotton warp and weft, with the back showing straight rows and small, legible knot nodes, the sort of regularity that only comes from a workshop loom with an experienced weaver following a drawn cartoon. Wool that dense and tightly packed is what lets a rug this size take decades of traffic and still show its drawing, and it is why a signed Kashan in excellent condition holds its value the way it does.