10'4" x 14'9" Persian Isfahan Rug | Red Field, Pastel Blue Medallion | Wool & Silk, Never Used

This is a large, formal, completely unused Persian Isfahan rug measuring 10'4" x 14'9", hand-knotted in wool with silk worked through the highlights on a cotton foundation. The pile sits at a trim 1/4", which is what lets the drawing stay crisp at this scale: nothing is blurred or crowded, even across almost 15 feet of length. It reads as a true room-size piece rather than an enlarged small rug, which is the usual giveaway on lesser oversize work, and it belongs with our other 10x14 Persian rugs in the size range that covers a full seating group. It has never been on a floor, the ends and sides are original and intact, and it ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

A stepped central medallion anchors the field, built in tiers: an ivory core holding a small 4 petal rosette, a wide pastel blue body filled with paired palmettes and tiny leaf sprays, and a serrated outline that steps outward before rising into narrow pendants at top and bottom. Around it the red field is not left open. It is covered edge to edge with an all-over lattice of hooked vines, angular palmettes, serrated leaves and small blossoms in the herati family, repeated at a scale small enough that the pattern reads as texture from standing height and as individual flowers up close. A large cusped cartouche shape in pastel blue frames the whole center, and the 4 corner spandrels repeat that blue with ivory palmettes set into them. The main border runs on navy, carrying alternating rosettes and shield-shaped medallions with curling leaves between them, and it is fenced on both sides by pale blue guard stripes with a running vine.

A Study in Red, Pastel Blue and Ivory

The field is a clear tomato red, warm rather than brown, and the silk highlights catch light so the red shifts a shade lighter or deeper depending on where you stand. Set against it, the medallion, the surrounding cartouche and the spandrels are a soft pastel blue with a faint turquoise cast, closer to a washed periwinkle than to a bright aqua, and that pale blue is what keeps a rug this red from feeling heavy. Ivory does the fine work: outlines on the vines, the medallion core, the palmette faces in the corners and the small blossoms scattered through the field. Two supporting tones round it out, a muted sage olive in the border flowers and leaves, and a dusty rose that appears in the larger border rosettes. The navy border frames all of it and pulls the eye back in from the edge. Overall the palette is traditional but unusually light-handed for a red ground rug, which makes it easier to live with in a room that already has pattern.

Isfahan Weaving in Central Persia

Isfahan sits in central Persia and has been a weaving center since the Safavid court workshops of the 16th century. The whole reputation of the city rests on drawing: the flowing vine, the balanced medallion, the ability to hold a curved or precisely stepped line across a long field, none of which is possible without a high knot count and a disciplined loom. That standard shows here in the way the field lattice keeps its rhythm from one end of nearly 15 feet to the other, and in how cleanly the medallion outline steps without wobbling. Wool for the pile with silk reserved for the highlights is the classic Isfahan combination, giving the rug the durability of wool underfoot and the light-catching detail of silk exactly where the design needs it. Being brand new and never walked on, the pile is still at full height and the colors are at full strength, so the next owner gets the entire life of the rug ahead of them.