10'8" x 16' Persian Kashan Sarouk Rug | Antique 1930s Manchester Wool | All Over Floral

This 10'8" x 16' Persian Kashan dates to the 1930s and was woven in the Kashan Sarouk manner, with the fine silky Manchester wool that separates the better antique Persian Kashan rugs of that decade from ordinary commercial work. The field is drawn as a continuous all over floral, so there is no central medallion competing with furniture, and at roughly 171 square feet it fills a true great room from wall to wall. The pile still has body and sheen, the selvages and fringe are original, and the drawing remains crisp after nearly a century, which is why the condition reads excellent for the age. It is one of the few genuinely oversize Persian rugs of this period to come through with its wool intact, and it ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The field carries an all over floral repeat built from slender vases, split palmettes, round rosettes and long serrated leaves that lean out from thin vine stems, the drawing vocabulary that links this piece to Persian Sarouk rugs of the same decade. Look along the center line and you can read the mirrored layout: paired vases facing one another, small boteh forms tucked between the blossoms, and a vertical spine of paired palmettes marching the full 16' length. Nothing repeats mechanically, so the pattern stays alive as you cross the rug. The frame is a wide main border of flowering vine on a near black ground, held between camel gold guard stripes filled with a reciprocal trefoil and ivory cloud motifs, then closed by narrow bead and stem bands at each edge. The 4 corners resolve cleanly, a sign the weaver worked from a proper cartoon rather than improvising at the ends.

Color: Antique Burgundy Red, Navy and Camel Gold

The ground is a deep antique burgundy red that shifts toward oxblood under direct light and toward wine in shade, with gentle abrash bands that prove hand-dyed yarn in small lots. Against it the flowers are drawn in two blues, a mid indigo for the rosette centers and a near black navy for the outlines and the main border ground, which is what makes the pattern read from across the room. Camel gold does the lifting work in the guard stripes and in the leaf tips and vase necks, ivory appears as fine outline and cloud detail, and hints of olive green and soft walnut brown fill the larger leaves. The silky Manchester wool takes dye with real depth, so the same red looks darker along the pile lay and brighter against it, a movement you see clearly in the rolled edge photograph. Buyers working around mahogany, brass or dark leather tend to search red and burgundy Persian rugs for exactly this palette.

Origin: Kashan Weaving and Manchester Wool Quality

Kashan sits in central Persia north of Isfahan and has woven to workshop standards since the Safavid court period, which is why the name still carries weight in the trade. When you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. In the 1920s and 1930s the best Kashan and Sarouk ateliers bought long staple merino fleece that had been spun in Manchester, England, then re-imported it for the pile, because it took dye more evenly and finished with a silkier hand than most local wool. That is the yarn in this rug, knotted on a cotton foundation at a tight village to town weave you can read on the back in the folded corner photograph. Pieces of this size were commissioned for specific rooms rather than woven on speculation, and the even knotting across 16' of length is a workshop habit, not a coincidence. If you want to understand how weave, dye and wear combine to place a piece in a decade, our guide on how to date an antique Oriental rug covers the same markers a dealer checks by hand.