10'8" x 20' Persian Kashan Rug | Signed Oversize Floral Medallion | Perfect Condition

Very few rooms can take a rug this long, and very few rugs at 20 feet hold their drawing together the way this one does. This is a signed Persian Kashan rug, hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation, with a deep red field, a navy medallion crowned in ivory and sky blue, and a woven cartouche set into the border where the workshop signed its work. The pile is full and even from end to end, the sides and ends are intact, and the wool still carries the soft sheen that good Kashan fleece keeps for decades. Among oversize Persian rugs of this length, a piece in this condition with a signature intact is not something that turns up often. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The layout is the classic Kashan formula worked at palace scale. A lobed navy medallion sits dead center, filled with an ivory ring of rosettes and leaf sprays around a sky blue core with a single red flower head at its heart. Above and below it hang slender pendants, each one a small navy cartouche holding its own pink and ivory blossom. The red field around the medallion is not open ground: it is covered edge to edge with an all-over lattice of curved vines, palmettes, lotus heads, serrated leaves and tiny ivory five petal flowers, drawn small enough that the pattern reads as texture from standing height and as individual blossoms up close. Navy spandrels anchor the 4 corners, each filled with the same vine work in lighter tones. The border system runs 5 bands deep: a wide navy main border of palmettes and scrolling stems, flanked by sky blue floral guard stripes and narrow ivory meander bands. In the end border, an ivory cartouche carries the woven signature script, and a second small cartouche appears at the opposite end.

The Color Palette: Crimson Field, Navy Borders, Ivory Light

The field is a true crimson red, slightly cooler and more wine toned than a brick red, and it holds an even tone across the full 20 feet with only the gentle variation good vegetable and natural dye work gives. Against it, the main border and spandrels are a deep indigo navy that reads almost black at a distance and opens into clear blue in raking light. Between the two sits the color that makes this rug sing: a bright sky blue, used in the guard stripes, in the medallion core and scattered through the flower heads, which lifts the whole palette out of the usual red and navy pairing. Ivory and cream do the drawing work, outlining every vine and petal so the pattern stays legible. Supporting tones include olive and leaf green in the foliage, rose pink and salmon in the larger blossoms, soft gold and apricot in the border palmettes, and touches of chestnut brown. The outer selvage is finished in red and the ends are ivory fringe.

Kashan: The Weaving Town and the Quality of the Work

Kashan sits in central Persia, north of Isfahan, and its weaving tradition runs back to the Safavid court workshops. The town is known for soft lustrous local wool and for the formula repeated here: a red field, a lobed navy medallion, ivory spandrels and a dense curvilinear border. It is also the design most Americans have seen without knowing its name, because when you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. Weaving a rug 20 feet long demands a loom, a cartoon and a team of weavers working in unison for a long stretch, which is why the finest examples come from organized workshops rather than village looms, and why a signature cartouche matters: the workshop was willing to put its name in the border. The knotting here is fine and regular, the back shows a tight even grid, and the field drawing stays true from the first row to the last with no drift in the medallion or the border repeat. That discipline over this distance is the real measure of the piece.