10'11" x 15'6" Persian Kashan Rug | Navy Blue Allover Floral Field with Vases and Boteh | Woven Cartouche | Oversize Wool Pile

This is a room-filling Kashan at 10'11" x 15'6", woven in central Persia with a cotton foundation and a 3/8" wool pile that still stands full and even across the whole field. Two things make it stand apart from the usual red-ground Kashan: the ground is a deep saturated navy rather than madder red, and the drawing is an allover garden rather than a large dominating medallion, so the pattern reads continuously even when half the rug sits under a dining table or a sofa. A small inscription cartouche is woven into the ivory top border, the mark of a workshop piece rather than a nameless commercial run. It ships with our certificate of authenticity, and it falls into the group of oversize Persian rugs that we ship free, freight and all, to every one of the 50 states.

Design and Motifs

The field is laid out as a mirrored garden. At the exact center sits a compact lozenge medallion, barely 18 inches across, drawn in pale sky blue with a rust core and finished with tiny arabesque hooks, and from each side of it a long boteh stem reaches outward like a pendant. Above and below, a tall flowering vase anchors each end, its neck rising into palmettes, carnations and serrated leaves, and around them the ground fills with paisley boteh, rosettes, cypress-like sprays and curling vine, every element outlined so finely that the individual flower heads stay legible from standing height. The corners carry quarter spandrels that echo the same vocabulary rather than a plain contrasting panel. Framing all of it is a wide main border of linked palmettes and rosettes on an ivory and rose ground, set between paired narrow guard stripes of running vine and a delicate reciprocal minor band, with a further dark blue outer stripe that pulls the whole composition back to the field. The border count, 5 bands in total, is typical of the better Kashan workshops.

The Navy Blue and Multi-Color Palette

The ground is a true navy, an indigo that reads almost black in low light and opens up to a clear deep blue where the pile catches the sun, with the gentle tonal movement across the field that only natural dye lots and hand-spun wool produce. Against it the motifs are drawn in ivory and cream, soft rose and dusty pink, a lighter sky blue that gives the flowers air, camel gold, olive green, warm rust and terracotta, with small accents of deep burgundy inside the palmette hearts. The border flips the balance: there the ground is pale ivory washed with rose, so the rug is framed in light and the navy interior feels deeper by contrast, while the innermost guard stripe returns to a bright mid blue. It is a palette that works both ways in a room, cool and formal from a distance, warm and detailed up close, and it sits comfortably with walnut and mahogany, brass, cream upholstery and anything in the blue-grey family.

Kashan: The Weaving City and the Quality of the Weave

Kashan sits in central Persia north of Isfahan, and its looms carry a court workshop tradition that goes back to the Safavid era, when the city supplied some of the finest silk and wool pieces ever made. The local wool is soft and unusually lustrous, which is why a Persian Kashan rug tends to glow rather than look flat, and the town's weavers are known for keeping curved floral drawing accurate at scale, which is exactly what an allover field 15'6" long demands. The back of this piece shows a tight, regular knot with straight rows and no pulling at the sides, and the ivory cotton warps are cleanly plied, the signature of a full-time workshop loom rather than a village effort. If you have ever noticed the rug on the floor during Shark Tank, that is a Persian Kashan. This one takes the same tradition into a navy ground and an oversize format, which is far less common and much harder to find in excellent condition.