10'8" x 15'4" Persian Kashan Rug | All-Over Floral Vine Design | Navy Blue | Circa 1970's

Most Kashan rugs of this generation were woven with a red field and a lobed central medallion. This one takes the harder route: a deep navy ground, no medallion at all, and an unbroken lattice of flowering vine that runs corner to corner across 15 feet of floor. It is a Persian Kashan rug from the 1970's, hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation, and at 10'8" x 15'4" it belongs firmly in the oversize Persian rugs class, a piece scaled for a long dining table or a full seating group with furniture legs on the wool. The pile is even and full, the ivory fringe and selvages are intact, and the drawing reads cleanly on the reverse. Every rug ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The field is an all-over composition built on a pair of mirrored vine systems that repeat along the long axis. Ivory scrolling stems carry 8 petal rosettes, split palmettes, serrated saz leaves and small boteh forms, each one outlined so the drawing stays legible against the dark ground. Look closely at the field detail and you will find fine touches the loom did not have to include: tiny 4 petal buds tucked between the larger blossoms, gold-centered florets on their own short stems, and rows of minute dotted blossoms that read almost like beading. The border system runs 5 bands deep. A wide sky blue main border alternates ivory rosette cartouches with palmette and vine links, flanked by a navy secondary band of the same vocabulary at reduced scale, then pale guard stripes of running vine that close the composition. The 4 corners are resolved properly, with the border pattern turning rather than being cut off, which is the mark of a cartoon drawn for this exact size.

A Navy Field Lit From Within by Sky Blue and Ivory

The ground is a true navy that leans almost aubergine where the light strikes the pile at an angle, and near black in the shadowed photographs. Against it the weaver worked a full palette: soft ivory and cream for the vine scrolls and the larger rosettes, several distinct blues from pale sky through mid turquoise to a green-leaning teal, warm gold and saffron for the smaller florets, rust and burnt orange in the leaf tips, and a cool brown that outlines many of the stems. Pinpoints of crimson sit at the heart of scattered blossoms and give the whole field a pulse of warmth. The wide main border shifts to a clear sky blue, the lightest value in the rug, which lifts the outer frame and stops the navy from reading heavy across a room this size. Seen from the far end, the overall tone is a deep evening blue shot through with cream and gold.

Kashan, Central Persia, and the Weave Behind It

Kashan sits in central Persia north of Isfahan, and its looms carry a workshop tradition that reaches back to the Safavid court. The town is known for soft, lustrous local wool and for curvilinear drawing executed at a knot count high enough to hold a curved line, which is exactly what an all-over vine field demands. When you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor, which is as good a demonstration as any of how well these rugs read on camera and in a room. The back of this piece shows a tight, regular knot with the pattern fully articulated on the reverse, cotton warps running straight, and no crowding or slippage across the width, which is not a small achievement on a loom strung nearly 11 feet wide. Weight and density are substantial, the pile stands up evenly, and a rug built like this is still early in its working life after 50 years.