10'2" x 16'7" Signed Persian Kashan Rug | Red Field Floral Medallion | Oversize Excellent Condition

A signed weaving at 10'2" x 16'7" is not something that turns up often. This is a full-scale Persian Kashan rug, hand-knotted on a cotton foundation with a 3/8" wool pile, and the weaver put a woven cartouche into the border rather than leaving the piece anonymous. That single detail tells you it came off a workshop loom where someone was willing to sign their name to the drawing. The pile is even end to end, the selvedges are intact, the fringe is clean and the condition is excellent, which is rare on a rug of this footprint because oversize pieces usually take the worst of a room's traffic. At just over 16 feet long it belongs with our oversize Persian rugs, the sort of floor covering that settles a long living room or a 12 seat dining table without needing anything else on the floor. Every rug we ship carries a certificate of authenticity confirming origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The layout is the classic Kashan formula executed at full length. A lobed navy medallion sits dead center with an ivory inner cartouche carrying an 8 petal rosette, and from its tips a pair of long pendants reach up and down the field. Around it the red ground is covered, not sprinkled, with a dense all-over vine: curling palmettes, small rosettes, serrated leaves and buds strung on thin stems that turn back on themselves so no two square feet read the same. The 4 corners carry navy spandrels filled with ivory and pale blue arabesque, and their stepped edges frame the open drawing of the field. The border system runs 5 bands deep: a wide navy main border of alternating palmettes and rosettes on a scrolling vine, flanked by narrow guard stripes in ivory, light blue and rust that step the pattern down to the edge. The cartouche with the woven signature interrupts the guard stripe at the top, set on a green and ivory panel, which is exactly where a Kashan workshop places it.

The Color: Madder Red Against Deep Indigo

The field is a true madder red, warm and slightly cherry toned rather than orange, and it holds a soft sheen where the lustrous wool catches light. Against it the borders, spandrels and medallion outline sit in a deep indigo navy that reads almost black in the corners and lifts to a clearer blue where the vine crosses it. The drawing itself is where the color gets interesting: ivory and cream do the heavy lifting in the medallion center and spandrel infill, while a bright sky blue picks out individual petals and leaf tips throughout the field. Sage and olive green run through the leaves and stems, and small hits of gold, rust and pale pink appear in the rosette hearts and in the guard stripes. The overall temperature is warm and formal, the kind of red that grounds dark wood, brass and leather, and the light blue accents keep it from going heavy. Colors are handspun wool dyed in small lots, so slight abrash variation across the red field is part of the weave, not a flaw.

Kashan: The Court Workshop Town of Central Persia

Kashan sits in central Persia, north of Isfahan, and its weaving lineage runs straight back to the Safavid court workshops. The town had two advantages that never left it: soft, lustrous local wool that takes dye deeply and holds a sheen for generations, and a workshop tradition where designer, dyer and weaver were separate trades. That division of labor is why a Kashan of this size stays true, with the medallion centered, the border corners resolved properly and the vine repeating without the drift you see in village work. The red field, navy lobed medallion and ivory spandrel combination seen here is the formula the town is known for worldwide. If you want a sense of how familiar it is, when you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. On a piece this long the achievement is consistency: the same drawing, the same density and the same tension held across more than 16 feet of loom, then signed by the workshop that did it.