10'8" x 16'3" Persian Kashan Rug | All-Over Boteh Paisley | Grey & Ivory, Excellent Condition

This Kashan measures a true 10'8" x 16'3", roughly 173 square feet of floor, the scale where a sofa, two chairs and a coffee table all sit well inside the field instead of pinning down the edges. The entire surface is given to a single idea: a pale grey and ivory ground carrying rank after rank of small boteh paisleys in cornflower blue, slate and soft terracotta, closed in by an ivory main border of larger upright botehs. It is hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation, the pile still full and level from end to end, and it leaves us with a certificate of authenticity recording origin, materials and construction. Among oversize Persian rugs a repeat pattern like this is the easier piece to live with, since there is no central medallion to hide under furniture, and if you want the background before you buy, our guide to Persian Kashan rugs covers the town and its weaving.

Design and Motifs

The field is a strict boteh repeat, the teardrop paisley with the curled tip, drawn small and set in offset rows so the eye reads diagonals as readily as horizontals. Each boteh is outlined in dark navy, filled with a lattice of tiny flowerheads and finished with a scalloped blue crest, and the spaces between them carry small star rosettes and terracotta blossoms on hair thin vines so no part of the ground is left empty. This is an all-over design in the truest sense, with no medallion, no spandrels and no single focal point. The main border answers the field at larger scale, alternating tall botehs with flowering sprays on an ivory ground, and it is held by a stack of narrow guard stripes on each side, the innermost a fine vine on grey and the outermost a running leaf band that keeps the whole rectangle crisp. Count the corners and you can see the drawing was resolved properly at all 4, with the border paisleys turning rather than colliding.

A Cool Grey, Ivory and Blue Palette

The dominant reading is grey: a soft dove grey ground that turns silver where the light crosses the pile and warms to a pale ivory cream in the close-ups, with faint grey-green shadowing behind the motifs. Against that neutral the blues do all the work, moving from light cornflower in the boteh centers through a mid slate blue in the crests to almost black navy in the outlines, which is what gives the small motifs their definition at a distance. Warm accents are used sparingly and deliberately: rust and terracotta blossoms, a few pale gold and olive leaf tips, and touches of dull brick in the border vines. There is no strong red anywhere and no high contrast ivory field, so the rug sits quietly under furniture and reads as a textured neutral in a room of greys, blues, camel or bleached wood. On the reverse, seen in the close-up with the ruler, the same cool blues and warm sand tones show clean and unfaded down to the knot.

Kashan: Central Persia and the Weaving Quality

Kashan sits in central Persia, north of Isfahan, and its workshops trace their tradition back to the Safavid court looms. Two things built the reputation: soft, lustrous local wool that holds dye with real depth, and disciplined town weaving on a cotton foundation, tightly and evenly knotted rather than loose village work. You can see that discipline here in the regularity of the repeat over more than 16 feet of length, where every row of botehs holds its spacing and the pile has been clipped to an even medium height that lets the outlines stay sharp. Most buyers know the town through its red field and navy medallion formula, and when you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor, but the boteh all-over is an older and more restrained side of the same weaving tradition and far harder to find in this size. The back shows a clean, dense knot with straight rows and firm selvages, the signs of a rug woven to be used for generations rather than admired for a season.