10'4" x 16'5" Persian Isfahan Rug | Red Floral Medallion | Signed Najaf Abad Cartouche | Never Used

This is a full palace piece: 10'4" x 16'5" of hand-knotted wool and silk, drawn in the classic city formula of central Persia and finished with a small woven cartouche at the top border that reads "Najaf Abad". It has never been on a floor. The pile stands a full 1/4" high, the silk in the medallion and the scrolling vines still carries its original sheen, and the selvedges and fringes are untouched. A rug of this length is a commitment, and it is priced and documented as one, with a certificate of authenticity supplied at delivery. If you want the background on the drawing tradition behind it, read our complete guide to Persian Isfahan rugs before you decide.

Design and Motifs

The layout is a single central medallion on a densely worked all over field. The medallion is built in concentric rings: a small square rosette at the dead center, a ring of 8 blue and crimson petals around it, then a lobed indigo cartouche ring, then a soft sage green halo that lifts the whole motif off the red. From the top and bottom of the medallion rise two long pendant finials, each drawn as a stacked palmette. Around it the field carries no empty ground at all, just continuous arabesque vinework, serrated leaves, Shah Abbas palmettes, lotus heads and small multicolored rosettes that mirror across both the long and short axes. Four corner spandrels in pale sage repeat the medallion vocabulary at a reduced scale and give the field its shaped, arched outline. The main indigo border runs a turtle palmette and rosette rhythm with an unbroken meandering vine, flanked by narrow ivory and red guard stripes on both sides. The cartouche sits centered in the upper border, small enough to be missed at a glance, which is exactly how the weavers of this school signed their work.

Color Detail

The field is a true tomato red, clear and even from selvedge to selvedge, with no abrash and no streaking, which is the mark of well managed dye lots on a run this long. Against it the palette is deliberately cool: deep indigo in the border and in the outer ring of the medallion, a bright sky blue in the palmette interiors, and a soft eucalyptus sage that appears in the medallion halo, the spandrels and scattered leaf forms. Ivory does the drawing work, outlining petals and vines so that the pattern reads cleanly from standing height, and small hits of olive gold, terracotta, chestnut brown and dusty rose sit inside the flowerheads. Where silk is used, in the medallion core and in the finer vine outlines, it shifts between light and dark as you walk around the rug, so the same flower can look pale ivory from one end and warm honey from the other. The border's dark indigo ground frames the red field the way a mat frames a painting and keeps a room this size from going soft at the edges.

Origin and Weave

Isfahan sits in central Persia and has been the reference point for fine curvilinear weaving since the Safavid court workshops of the 16th century. Its reputation rests on drawing rather than decoration: a curved line that stays curved, a vine that flows without a stutter, and precision that only holds up at a high knot count. Najaf Abad, the town named in this rug's cartouche, lies just west of Isfahan and weaves squarely within that tradition, on cotton warps with wool and silk pile, to the same cartoons and the same standards. The back of the rug shows tight, regular rows with the knot nodes clearly defined, and the pattern reads as sharply from the reverse as it does from the face. Building a piece at this width takes a wide loom, several weavers working shoulder to shoulder and years of continuous work, which is why rugs in this format are far scarcer than the standard room sizes. Buyers shopping oversize Persian rugs will find few signed city pieces of this length that have never been used, and it ships free anywhere in the 50 states.