10'8" x 14'1" Persian Kashan Rug | Red Field, Ivory Floral Medallion | Fine Wool, Excellent Condition

This is the Kashan formula done properly and done big: a deep madder red field, one ivory lobed medallion floating dead center, four ivory spandrels pulling the corners in, and a wide ivory main border that frames the whole thing like a picture mount. What separates it from an ordinary red Kashan is the drawing. The field is not filled, it is composed, with paired cartouches, flowering sprays and thin curling vines answering each other across the center line in true mirror symmetry. The wool pile stands 3/8" and reads full and even across all 14 feet, with none of the low patches that show up in the traffic lanes of a rug that has been worked hard. At 128 by 169 inches it covers a full living or dining room and belongs squarely in the 10x14 Persian rugs bracket. It ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The center medallion is an elongated 8 lobed ivory cartouche built around a small navy and coral rosette, ringed by golden arabesque vine that loops back on itself and encloses cypress leaves, blue tulip heads and brown oak sprigs. Above and below it, two ivory pendants drop into the red ground, each ending in a small palmette. The field carries an all over composition rather than an empty ground: large curved boteh cartouches sit in the four quarters, each one outlined in a chain of tiny ivory blossoms, and between them run feathered lancet leaves and thin flowering stems in navy, coral and ivory. The 4 corner spandrels repeat the medallion's vocabulary at reduced scale, so the eye reads the rug as one continuous idea. The main border is a classic turtle palmette and vine sequence on ivory, flanked by narrow reciprocal guard stripes in navy, and the corners are resolved cleanly, which is the first thing to check on a curvilinear Persian design of this size.

Madder Red Field Under Ivory, Indigo and Olive

The field red is a true madder tone, warm and slightly brick rather than fire engine, and it shifts with the light: photographed flat it reads deep and saturated, photographed at an angle along the nap it opens up into a lighter, almost tomato glow. The ivory of the medallion, spandrels and main border is not a flat white but a soft cream with a faint oatmeal cast, which keeps the contrast from feeling harsh. Inside those ivory areas the secondary palette does all the work: dark indigo and mid cornflower blue in the rosettes and leaf tips, a dusty coral that appears in nearly every palmette, olive and sage green in the border flowers and around the spandrel edges, plus small touches of soft brown and buttery gold in the vine outlines. Pale sky blue turns up in the medallion tracery. Nothing in the palette is synthetic bright, and the whole set sits comfortably against warm hardwood, cream plaster and dark wood furniture.

Kashan Weaving and the Quality of This 10'8" x 14'1" Rug

Kashan sits in central Persia, north of Isfahan, and its looms carry the Safavid court workshop tradition directly: soft, lustrous local wool, cotton warp and weft, and a curvilinear medallion layout that has barely changed in 400 years. It is also the most recognizable Persian design in America, the one most people have seen without knowing its name. When you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. The back of this piece, shown against a ruler, tells you what you are buying: tight, regular rows on a cotton foundation, with knot nodes small and consistent enough that the drawing stays crisp through the curved vine work, which is where a coarse weave always falls apart. If you want the background on how these are built and graded, our persian Kashan rug guide walks through the weave, the wool and what to look for. Pieces this size and this clean are the ones that stay in a family.