10'6" x 13'5" Persian Bakhtiari Rug | Garden Panel Khesti Design | Semi-Antique, Excellent Condition

This is the Bakhtiari garden rug people picture when they think of a big, friendly, colorful Persian room rug, and at 10'6" x 13'5" it covers a full seating group without asking the furniture to move. The field is divided into diamond compartments, each one a separate little garden in navy blue, brick red, ivory, brown or rose pink, and the wool has the dry, chalky luster that only comes from the heavy fleece of the Zagros highlands. The pile is thick and stands up straight, the cotton foundation is tight and flat, and the colors have settled into the soft, lived-in harmony of a rug that has aged well rather than one that was chemically washed to look old. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming origin, materials and hand-knotted construction, and this one sits comfortably alongside our other 10x13 Persian rugs as one of the more cheerful pieces in that size.

Design and Motifs

The layout is the khesti, or garden panel, plan that made Bakhtiari weaving famous: a lattice of lozenge shaped compartments, each with its own background color and its own contents, reading as a walled Persian garden seen from above. Some panels hold a central rosette ringed by stiff palmettes, some hold a flowering vase with two birds facing it, and others carry a cypress or a fan shaped weeping willow drawn in tiny hooked outlines. The drawing is village work, angular and confident, with white outlining around each compartment so the pattern stays legible from across a room, and small jagged serrated leaves filling the spaces between blossoms. The main border runs an ivory ground set with alternating cypress trees and single rose stems in dark brown, navy and pink, framed by narrow guard stripes of connected rosettes and a fine reciprocal ribbon. This is an all over design with no central medallion, which is why furniture can sit anywhere on it without cutting the composition in half.

A True Multi Color Palette

Multi color is an accurate description rather than a shortcut here. The compartments alternate between a deep indigo navy, a warm brick red that leans toward terracotta in the light, a creamy ivory, a chocolate brown and a dusty rose pink, and each of those grounds is then filled with blossoms in mustard gold, coral, soft sage green, pale blue and clear white. The close-up photographs show gentle abrash in the navy panels, the natural striation of small dye lots that tells you the yarn was dyed in village batches, and it gives the field movement instead of flatness. The ivory border and the white outlines carry the eye around the perimeter and keep all that color organized, while the brown and navy guard stripes give the whole rug a dark edge that grounds it against pale floors. Practically, a palette this broad means the rug dictates very little: it works with reds, blues, greens, wood tones, leather and plain linen upholstery equally well.

Bakhtiari Weaving in Chahar Mahal

Bakhtiari rugs come from the villages of Chahar Mahal va Bakhtiari in west central Persia, south of Isfahan, where settled families of the Bakhtiari confederation weave in workshops at home. Saman, Shalamzar, Boldaji and Faradonbeh are the names collectors look for, and the best of that work shares what you see here: a cotton warp and weft beaten down hard, a thick wool pile clipped fairly high, and a design vocabulary borrowed from the Isfahan court tradition but redrawn in straight lines a village loom can hold. The wool is the real asset. Flocks grazing the Zagros slopes produce a long, springy, high lanolin fleece that takes dye brilliantly and resists crushing, which is why semi-antique Bakhtiaris in this condition still have full pile after decades of use. It is a tribal Persian rug built for daily life rather than a display piece, and a room size example at 10'6" x 13'5" with even pile and unfaded color is harder to find every year.