10'6" x 14' Persian Rug | Allover Floral Red Field with Navy Border | Signed Cartouche, Circa 1970s

This is a genuine hand-knotted Persian room-size piece from the 1970s, wool pile on a cotton foundation, and it has the look of a rug that was bought for a formal room and then treated carefully. The field is a warm terracotta red carried edge to edge with flowering branches, and the main border is deep navy, so the drawing reads clearly from across the room rather than dissolving into pattern. One end carries a woven cartouche, the weaver's or workshop's mark, which is uncommon on a village-scale floral rug of this type and worth noting to a collector. At 10'6" x 14" of floor coverage this sits squarely in the 10x14 Persian rugs class, a size that anchors a large living room or great room under full furniture. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming it is hand-knotted and Persian in origin.

Design and Motifs

The layout is an allover floral built around a small navy center medallion rather than a large dominant one. That medallion is an 8 petal rosette set inside a navy cartouche shape, flanked by cream and gold arabesque curls and bouquets of pink, ivory and green blossoms. From there the field opens into detached flowering sprays, serrated leaves, curled vine tips and small blue rosettes, all drawn with a loose, naturalistic hand so no two bouquets repeat exactly. The corners are resolved with ivory spandrels filled with the same floral vocabulary in a lighter key, which frames the red field and gives the eye a place to rest. The main navy border is packed with alternating palmettes and rose sprays in pink, salmon, green and gold, bracketed by a reciprocating ivory guard stripe on the inner side and a fine pink and cream minor border on the outer side. The outermost edge finishes in a solid wine-red band, and the kilim and fringe at both ends are clean and even.

A Terracotta Red Field Against Navy and Green

The ground color is a brick to terracotta red with a slight rust warmth in it, not a cold crimson and not an orange. Because the wool has a natural luster, the field shifts tone as you walk around it: toward the light it lifts to a soft coral red, away from the light it deepens toward brick. Against that the main border is a near-black navy, the strongest contrast in the rug, and the floral work inside the border brings in dusty pink, clear rose, sage and olive green, muted gold, and small notes of light blue and ivory. The ivory spandrels and the ivory guard stripes carry a buttery cream tone rather than a bright white, which tells you the whites have mellowed naturally with age. The outer wine-red band and the deeper burgundy at the extreme edge are a darker register of the field color and close the whole scheme off neatly. The overall palette is traditional and warm, and it sits comfortably with wood floors, leather, brass and cream walls.

Persian Weaving and the Quality of This Piece

This is Persian village workshop weaving in the classic floral tradition: a cotton warp and weft foundation for stability at room size, and a dense wool pile clipped at a medium height so the drawing stays crisp. The back photograph shows an even, tight, regular knot structure with no slack rows and no puckering, which is what you want on a rug nearly 14 feet long, because a loose weave at that scale goes wavy on the floor. The wool is good quality and still full in the pile after decades, with the kind of sheen that only comes from well-spun, well-washed fleece. The woven cartouche at one end marks it as a workshop piece rather than an anonymous commercial run, and the drawing supports that: the vine work is confident, the borders turn the corners correctly, and the color palette is restrained in a way that casual production weaving usually is not. The 1970s dating is consistent with the structure, the palette and the mellowing of the ivory tones, and if you want to understand how that judgement is made, our guide on how to date an Oriental rug walks through the same signals.