10'2" x 13'7" Persian Kashan Rug | Red Field, Sky Blue Medallion | Signed Cartouche

At 10'2" x 13'7" this is a full room city workshop piece, hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation and signed with a woven cartouche set into the end panel, framed in green, ivory and red. The formula is the one Kashan built its name on: a deep red field packed with an all over floral lattice, a sky blue lobed medallion holding the center, and weighty navy borders that close the composition without crowding it. Pile depth is 3/8 inch, the surface reads even from end to end, the ends and sides are original, and the condition is excellent. It ships with our certificate of authenticity. If you want the background on the weave before you commit, our guide to Persian Kashan rugs walks through the history and the quality markers, and buyers measuring to a 10 by 14 footprint can compare the rest of our 10x14 Persian rugs.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a scalloped sky blue medallion outlined in navy, with an ivory 8 petal rosette core and concentric rings of rose palmettes and curling vine drawn inside it, then a slim pendant finial reaching into the field at each end. Around it the red ground is not left open: it carries a continuous all over arrangement of palmettes, split leaves, small blue and ivory rosettes and thin arabesque vine scroll, laid out symmetrically so the eye keeps returning to the medallion. The 4 corner spandrels are worked on navy grounds with pale ivory and blue cloud-form cartouches and dense flower clusters, giving the field a clear inner frame. The main border is navy with alternating rose and ivory palmettes on a running vine, flanked on both sides by mid blue guard stripes of small rosettes and by a narrow ivory meander at the outer edge. Nothing in the drawing is rushed; the curved lines close cleanly at every repeat, which is the tell of a workshop cartoon rather than village improvisation.

Color Palette in Detail

The field is a true saturated red, closer to ripe tomato than to burgundy, and it reads warm under lamplight rather than orange. Against it the medallion is a clear mid sky blue with a cooler cobalt shading along the lobes, which is what makes the center lift visually off the ground instead of sinking into it. The borders and spandrels run deep navy, almost blue-black in the main band, and they anchor the red so the rug never looks loud. Through the field and the border the accents are rose pink, chalk ivory, pale cream, soft olive green, a little mustard gold and a touch of coffee brown in the palmette centers, each outlined in ivory so the individual flowers stay legible at walking distance. The fringe and the guard stripe at the very edge are ivory, which keeps the outline crisp. The overall effect is the classic red, navy and ivory reading of central Persian city weaving, with enough sky blue to work alongside blue upholstery, dark wood and warm neutral walls.

Kashan Origin and Weaving Quality

Kashan sits in central Persia, north of Isfahan, and its looms carry a Safavid court workshop tradition that has been continuously worked for centuries. The town is known for soft lustrous local wool and for the classic formula seen here, a red field with a lobed medallion and framed spandrels, executed on a cotton foundation with a tight asymmetric knot. This example is a signed piece, which in Kashan means a named workshop stood behind the loom and the cartoon, and the woven cartouche at the end panel is part of the rug rather than a later addition. The knot detail in the close-up photographs shows small, evenly seated knots with clean color separation along every curve, the kind of density a 10 by 14 field demands if the drawing is going to stay sharp. Kashan is also the most recognizable Persian rug in American rooms: when you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor.