10'8" x 15'1" Persian Najafabad Isfahan Rug | Red Floral Medallion | Signed Cartouche, 1980s

A signed workshop piece from the 1980s, this rug measures 10'8" x 15'1" and covers a full formal room without a seam in the drawing. The weaver signed it in a small ivory cartouche worked into the upper border, Persian script on a pale ground, which on a piece of this scale means a named shop stood behind the loom rather than an anonymous village order. It is hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation, the pile still full and even across all 15 feet of length, with the original ends and sides intact. Pieces in this footprint sit at the top of our range of oversize Persian rugs, and this one arrives with our certificate of authenticity confirming origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a layered star medallion built in rings: a small rosette at the core, a navy field of tiny blossoms around it, then an ivory band of curled palmettes, then a sky blue lobed outer ring pushing 8 pointed cartouches outward into the field. Above and below it, pendant palmettes in ivory and blue carry the eye along the long axis. The red field around the medallion is filled edge to edge with a fine arabesque, thin ivory vines looping into split leaves, Shah Abbas palmettes and small five petal blossoms, all drawn in the curved line that the Isfahan style demands. Ivory spandrels close the 4 corners of the field with their own scrolling flowerheads. The main border is a wide navy band of alternating palmettes and rosettes joined by a turning vine, framed on both sides by light blue guard stripes and a narrow ivory minor stripe of running blossom.

A Red Field Held Between Navy and Ivory

The field is a clear tomato red, warm rather than brick, and it reads as a single even ground because the wool takes the dye consistently from selvage to selvage. Against it, the main border drops to a near black navy that gives the whole piece its weight and makes the room feel finished at the edges. Between those two poles sit the lighter tones that do most of the drawing: ivory and cream in the vines, spandrels and signature cartouche, a soft sky blue in the medallion rings and guard stripes, and a muted powder blue in the larger palmettes. Smaller quantities of sage green, taupe brown, old gold and a faint salmon pink appear inside the flowerheads and leaf tips, which is what keeps a red and navy rug from looking flat. On the floor, the red carries the room and the navy border anchors furniture placed on top of it.

Najafabad and the Isfahan Weaving Tradition

Najafabad is a weaving town a short drive west of Isfahan in central Persia, and it works in the Isfahan idiom: the same Safavid derived cartoons, the same curved vine, the same insistence that the drawing hold its line at scale. Where the city ateliers weave small silk and kork pieces at very high knot counts, Najafabad built its name on large wool room sizes like this one, dense enough to carry the detail and tough enough to live under furniture for decades. The back of this rug shows tight, regular rows on a cotton foundation, with the knot count high enough to resolve the fine ivory vinework you see in the field. If you want the background on the drawing tradition behind this piece, our guide to Isfahan rugs covers the history and the quality markers in detail.