10'4" x 13'11" Persian Moud Rug | Signed Cartouche | Navy All-Over Floral Lattice

This is a signed room-size Moud from eastern Persia, hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation and measuring 10'4" x 13'11". The weaver put his name in a small star cartouche worked into the main border, which is the sort of thing a workshop only does when it expects the piece to be looked at closely, and this one rewards that. The field is a deep navy carrying an all-over lattice of rosettes, blossoms and slender boteh, drawn with the fine, close detail that Moud weavers are known for, and the 3/8" pile has kept its full body and sheen. Condition is excellent throughout, with straight sides, intact ends and even pile across all 4 corners. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity, and this piece sits comfortably among our 10 x 14 Persian rugs for a living room or formal dining room.

Design and Motifs

There is no central medallion here. Instead the navy field is organized into a repeating framework of large ogival cartouches, each anchored by an 8 petal star rosette at its center and linked by curving outlines that read almost like a trellis when you step back. Between and around them the ground is filled edge to edge with small daisy-like blossoms, tulips, serrated leaves and tall elongated boteh, every element mirrored on the vertical axis so the repeat locks together cleanly. Detail photo 3 shows how tightly the drawing is packed: dozens of separate flower heads, each outlined in ivory against the dark ground, with tiny stems and buds filling the gaps. A narrow reciprocal guard band separates the field from a wide red-burgundy main border of palmettes and rosettes on a scrolling vine, with a second navy border carrying its own floral run. The signature cartouche sits within that border work, a red star panel with Persian script in ivory, framed by sky blue arrowhead leaves and rose-pink flowers.

A Deep Navy Field Lit by Rose, Ivory and Red

The base note is a dark, saturated navy blue that photographs almost aubergine at a distance and resolves to true indigo in close-up. Against it the palette is deliberately warm: soft ivory and cream for the flower heads, clear tomato red and a deeper madder red for the rosette centers and the main border ground, and a rose pink that appears in the smaller buds and in the blossoms below the signature. Cornflower and sky blue outline the leaves and give the field its cooler lift, while olive and a muted khaki-green run through the vine work and the border palmettes. Burgundy anchors the outer border, and a thin ivory guard stripe keeps the whole composition from closing in. Because no single accent dominates, the rug reads as a rich dark blue floor from across a room and as a genuinely multi-colored piece up close, which makes it forgiving next to both cool grey upholstery and warm wood tones.

Moud Weaving in South Khorasan

Moud is a small weaving village in South Khorasan, in the far east of Persia near Birjand, and its reputation is built on fineness rather than volume. Moud looms work wool pile on a cotton foundation at a knot count well above what most village weaving achieves, which is exactly what allows the curved outlines, the tiny blossoms and the slender boteh in this field to hold their shape instead of turning blocky. The back view confirms it: a tight, regular knot grid with clean rows and no gaps, and a low even pile that comes from careful clipping rather than wear. A woven signature marks this as workshop production rather than anonymous village work, and pieces in this size from Moud are not common, since most of the output goes to smaller formats. Handled properly, with rotation and regular professional cleaning, a rug built like this one has generations of floor life left in it.