10'3" x 13'1" Persian Kashan Rug | Semi-Antique All-Over Floral Medallion | Telemagenta & Ivory

This is a true room size piece, 10'3" x 13'1", hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation with a 3/8" pile that still stands full and even from one end to the other. The field carries a deep telemagenta red, the raspberry-leaning tone that central Persian dyers have favored for generations, and it is worked over with a continuous lattice of scrolling vine, palmette and rosette in ivory, teal and aubergine. A small lobed medallion sits at the center rather than dominating the field, which is what keeps a rug this large from feeling heavy. The ends are clean, the plain red outer band is intact, and the back shows a tight, regular knot line. You can read more about the type in our Persian Kashan rugs guide. Every rug leaves us with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The drawing is classic Kashan: a small lobed diamond medallion with a cream cartouche at its heart, filled with a cross rosette and paired coral buds, then ringed by dense aubergine scrollwork and finished top and bottom with slender finials. Around it the field runs as a true all-over floral design, a vine network of thin ivory tendrils that loop into large ivory palmettes, 8 petal rosettes and serrated teal leaves, repeating in mirrored pairs across the whole 13'1" length. The 4 corners carry ivory spandrels with their own vine and palmette work, giving the field a frame within the frame. The main border is a broad aubergine ground with alternating turtle palmettes and curled leaf forms, flanked by teal guard stripes of small linked rosettes, an ivory reciprocal zigzag minor guard, and a plain red outer band that squares the whole thing off cleanly.

The Telemagenta and Ivory Palette

The dominant color is that telemagenta red: not a brick or a rust, but a saturated raspberry crimson that shifts slightly warmer or cooler depending on which way the pile is lying, which is the sign of good lustrous wool. Against it, the ivory of the vines and palmettes reads almost cream, warmed to a light honey in the spandrels and border highlights. The border ground is a dark aubergine, an eggplant tone that photographs as near-black at a distance and opens up to plum and deep blue-violet in the close-up. Teal green does most of the secondary work in the leaves and guard stripes, with small hits of coral, salmon and soft rose in the flower heads and a fine dark navy outline that keeps every motif legible. It is a strong, formal palette that sits well with dark wood, brass and warm white walls, and it is one reason 10x13 Persian rugs in this colorway are so often bought for a formal main room.

Kashan: The Town and the Weave

Kashan sits in central Persia, north of Isfahan, and its weaving goes back to the Safavid court workshops of the 16th century. The town is known for soft, lustrous local wool and for the formula most people picture when they picture a Persian rug: a red field, a lobed medallion, ivory spandrels, and a curvilinear floral border. It is the Shark Tank rug. When you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. On this piece the weave is a fine, regular Persian knot on a cotton warp and weft, tight enough to hold the thin curved vine lines and the small rosettes without any of them breaking up, and beaten down firmly so the back shows a clean grid rather than a loose one. The 3/8" pile has enough body to take traffic in a large room for decades, and the wool has already taken on the light sheen that comes only from age and use.