10'3" x 13'7" Persian Kashan Rug | Navy Blue Floral Medallion | Signed Cartouche

A signed piece is a workshop piece, and this one says so twice: once in the cartouche woven into the upper border, and once in the sheer discipline of the drawing across 10'3" x 13'7" of fine wool pile. The field is a deep navy blue, almost ink at a distance, carrying a continuous garden of palmettes and vine work around a single ivory medallion. It is a true room-size piece that sits naturally under a 10 seat dining table or anchors a full seating group, and it belongs to the same family as our other 10x14 Persian rugs. Hand-knotted on a cotton foundation and in excellent condition, it ships with a certificate of authenticity documenting origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a lobed ivory medallion built out of a layered rosette, ring after ring of tiny florets radiating from a single brown and ivory flower head, with a fine lattice of interlaced strapwork filling the space between. Out from it runs an allover field of curved arabesque vines, large open palmettes, split leaves and small 8 petal blossoms, drawn so the pattern mirrors cleanly across both axes without ever looking mechanical. The borders are the tell of a serious weaving: a wide light blue main border of alternating palmettes and rosettes on a scrolling stem, framed by no fewer than 4 narrow guard stripes of running vine and reciprocal cresting. In the upper border sits the signature cartouche, the woven mark of the workshop that made it, photographed here in detail.

The Navy, Ivory and Gold Palette

Navy blue is the ground for everything, a dark saturated indigo tone that reads nearly black in low light and opens up to a clear deep blue in daylight, which is exactly how a good wool pile should behave as you walk around it. Against that, the drawing is carried in soft ivory and cream, with a pale powder blue doing most of the secondary line work, so the vine scroll stays legible instead of disappearing into the field. Warm accents do the lifting: antique gold and mustard in the palmettes, cinnamon and walnut brown in the flower centers, and small, deliberate touches of tomato red that appear only a few times per repeat. The main border flips the balance, putting light blue and ivory in front so the dark field is fenced by a bright frame. It is a cool, formal palette that sits well with dark wood, brass and cream upholstery.

Kashan Weaving and Quality

Kashan sits in central Persia, north of Isfahan, and its looms inherit the Safavid court workshop tradition directly: a red or navy field, a lobed medallion, a curved vine field and borders drawn by a designer rather than improvised at the loom. The town's local wool is soft and lustrous, which is why a Kashan keeps its sheen after decades of use, and it is the design most Americans already know by sight, since when you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. The close-up of the reverse shows the knot lines tight and even, the weft straight, and the pile clipped low enough for the finer detail in the medallion to hold its edges. If you want the full background on the town, the workshops and how to judge one, our guide to Persian Kashan rugs covers it in depth.