10'4" x 15'2" Persian Isfahan Rug | Red Field with Light Blue Star Medallion | Excellent Condition

A room-filling piece drawn in the classic workshop manner, this rug pairs a deep madder red field with a light blue star medallion and a wide cornflower blue border. The wool is dense and lustrous at a 3/8" pile, the drawing is curvilinear from edge to edge, and the condition is excellent with even pile and clean, straight sides. At 10'4" x 15'2" it sits in the territory of oversize Persian rugs that anchor a full living room or a long dining table without a stitch of floor showing at the perimeter, and it reads as a single composition rather than a scaled-up small rug. If you want the background on how these pieces are drawn and knotted, our guide to Persian Isfahan rugs covers it in detail. Every rug we ship travels with a certificate of authenticity recording origin, materials and measurements.

Design and Motifs

The center holds an 8 point star medallion built up in light blue, with a small rosette at its heart ringed by cobalt cartouche shapes and olive green leaf forms. Above and below it sit lobed pendants in the same blue, and the 4 corners carry ivory spandrels filled with dense floral tracery. Across the red field runs an unbroken system of ivory vine scroll, looping in wide arcs and throwing off Shah Abbasi palmettes, tulips, carnations and split leaves in blue, rose and olive. Four small square panels, two at the top of the field and two at the bottom, break the symmetry just enough to keep the eye moving. The main border is a procession of boteh forms alternating with lobed floral cartouches, framed by narrow ivory guard stripes of running vine. This is a fully curvilinear layout with no angular shortcuts, the mark of a town workshop rather than a village loom.

The Red and Blue Palette Up Close

The field is a warm brick red with a slight rose cast where the light catches the pile, not a hard tomato red and not a brown-leaning rust. Against it, the medallion reads pale cornflower blue with deep navy outlining, so the center appears to float rather than sit flat. The border ground is a mid-blue with a faint slate tone, darker than the medallion and cooler than the field, which gives the rug a clear frame from across a room. Ivory does most of the structural work, drawing the vines, the guard stripes and the corner spandrels, and it has aged to a soft cream rather than a bright white. Olive green appears in the leaves, rose and salmon in the smaller blossoms, and small touches of aubergine and brown sit inside the palmettes. The overall effect is warm and traditional, and the red carries equally well against dark wood, pale oak or a stone floor.

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. Its reputation rests on drawing: the curved line, the flowing vine, the exact repetition of a palmette at the far end of a 15 foot field. That kind of precision only works on a fine, tightly packed weave, which is why Isfahan looms are held to a higher standard than village production. You can see it here in the back detail, where the knotting is regular and small enough to carry the fine outlines of the medallion without the pattern breaking up. The wool is soft and takes a sheen with use, the cotton foundation keeps a rug of this length lying flat and square, and a piece woven to this standard is built to be walked on for generations rather than protected.