10'2" x 13'5" Persian Kashan Rug | All-Over Paisley Boteh Field | Signed Semi-Antique

Most people picture a red field and a big lobed medallion when they hear Kashan, which is exactly why this one is worth a second look. It is a Persian Kashan rug drawn entirely in boteh, the paisley motif, repeated in tight vertical rows from one end of the 13'5" length to the other with no medallion and no open ground anywhere. The weaver signed the work with a small cartouche woven into the ivory border, visible in the close-up photograph, which tells you this came off a named loom rather than an anonymous commercial one. The wool has aged into a soft, slightly waxy handle, the 3/8" pile stands full and even across all 10'2" of width, and there is no low area or repair to report. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity that records the origin, materials and measurements exactly as listed above.

Design and Motifs

The field is a strict all-over boteh design, sometimes called mir-e boteh, with roughly 20 paisleys across the width and more than 25 rows running the length. Each boteh is outlined twice, filled with a small trellis of leaves and a single bud at the base, and tipped with a hooked curl that leans the same direction down every row, so the eye reads a steady rhythm rather than a static grid. Between the paisleys the weaver dropped tiny cross-shaped flowerheads and four-dot clusters so no ground is left bare. The border system runs 5 bands deep: a wide ivory main border carrying larger, leaf-filled botehs standing upright, flanked by narrow guard stripes of rosebuds, a beaded pearl row, and thin barber-pole stripes that frame the field cleanly at all 4 corners. The corner resolution is neat, with the main border paisleys turning the corner without being cut in half, which is the mark of a properly drafted cartoon.

A Quiet Palette of Ivory, Gray and Olive

The ground is a warm ivory, closer to unbleached linen than to white, and it carries an oyster-gray cast in the field that lifts to a lighter cream in the main border. The paisleys themselves are worked mostly in olive and sage, with their inner teardrops filled in a pale slate blue that reads almost powder blue in daylight. Deeper navy appears as outlining and in the small crosses of the guard stripes, giving the whole surface its definition, while flashes of rust and terracotta in the buds and rosettes keep the neutral scheme from going cold. Look closely at the detail photograph and you will see soft-gold touches inside a few of the border flowers as well. This is a genuinely light rug, an unusual thing in room-size Persian weaving, and it works with oak and walnut floors, with gray upholstery, and with cream walls where a red Kashan would dominate instead of settle in.

Kashan Weaving and the Quality of This Piece

Kashan sits in central Persia, north of Isfahan, and its looms trace back to the Safavid court workshops that first made Persian weaving famous. The town is known for soft, lustrous local wool and for disciplined drawing, and both show here: the paisleys hold their shape at a small scale over 136 square feet of surface, which only happens when the knot count is high enough and the weaver counts carefully row after row. This is also the design family most Americans have seen without knowing it, since when you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. Woven on a cotton foundation with an all-wool pile and finished with a signed cartouche, this piece belongs with the better 10x13 Persian rugs we handle, sized to cover a dining table with chairs pulled back or to anchor a full seating group with the front legs on.