10'5" x 17'6" Persian Kashan Rug | Wool | Oversize

A rectangular carpet of 10'5" x 17'6", hand-knotted in wool in Persia to a Kashan drawing. At 210 inches long it sits well into oversize territory, the length of a long dining room or a hall. The field carries no central medallion. It is covered corner to corner with blue flowerheads and scrolling vine on a light ground, and the whole thing is framed by a wide main border and several narrow stripes in the same restrained palette.

The design

The field is an allover pattern: heavy curling leaves swing out in mirrored pairs and enclose rounded compartments, and inside and around them sit rosettes and star-centred flowerheads of several sizes, the largest drawn in dark blue with paler blue petals. The repeat is symmetrical along both axes, so the pattern reads the same from either end of the room. The main border runs palmettes and curled leaves on a lighter ground between two flanking stripes of small blue flowerheads, and outside those a narrow vine stripe finishes the edge on all four sides. At the midpoint of one end border, as the close photograph shows, a shield-shaped cartouche interrupts the repeat and holds a line of woven script.

The colour

The field is ivory, though in the full-length photographs it reads cooler, closer to a pale silver-green, and warms towards cream in the close detail. Over it the blues do all the work: navy for the outlines and the vine, mid blue for the larger rosettes, and a chalky sky blue for the smaller flowers and leaf fills. Small amounts of olive green, soft rose and brick appear in the flower centres and in the border palmettes, enough to keep the blue from going flat without changing the overall cool, quiet cast of the carpet.

The making

Hand-knotted in Persia with a wool pile clipped to 3/8 of an inch, on a light warp that ends in plain white fringes at both ends. The photograph of the reverse shows an even, close weave, with the small blue and red flower details holding their shape knot for knot on the back as they do on the face. Condition is excellent, with the pile standing full across the field and the borders unworn. It is among the larger pieces in our hand-knotted stock, and one of the plainer-palette wool carpets of its size.