10' x 12'2" Persian Mashad Rug | Burgundy Floral Medallion | Navy Boteh Border

This is a full room-size floral Mashad, hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation and drawn with the kind of dense, unhurried detail that city workshops in Khorasan are known for. Laid flat, the 10' x 12'2" field carries a single ivory-cored medallion in the centre and then fills every remaining inch with scrolling vine, palmettes and small blossoms, so the eye never runs out of things to follow. The pile stands at 3/8", even from end to end, the sides and the ivory fringes are intact, and the back shown in the last photograph is clean and tight with no repairs or reweaving. It ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming it as a genuine hand-knotted Persian rug. At this size it works as the anchor piece for a formal living room or a long dining table, and it belongs with our other large Persian rugs.

Design and Motifs

The centre holds a layered star medallion: an ivory rosette core, then a ring of blue and rose petals, then a dark navy cartouche outline that throws pendants north and south into the field. Around it the drawing is fully curvilinear, with long arabesque leaves, split palmettes, 8 petal rosettes and tiny five-blossom sprays running on thin vine stems in every direction. The 4 corners carry navy spandrels filled with the same vocabulary at reduced scale, which frames the medallion without boxing it in. The main border is the strongest element after the medallion: a broad navy ground carrying alternating boteh and upright palmette cartouches, each one filled with rose, gold, green and sky blue. Two ivory guard bands with a running meander flank it, and a narrow burgundy outer stripe closes the rug off. The detail photograph of the corner shows how cleanly the border turns, which is a fair indicator of a workshop cartoon rather than a copied village pattern.

The Burgundy Field, Navy Border and Ivory Lights

The field is a deep burgundy red that reads bright and raspberry-toned in direct light and settles into a cooler wine tone across the body of the rug, a shift you can see between the overhead photograph and the angled one. Against it the palette is mostly cool: two distinct blues, a mid sky blue used for leaves and flower heads and a near-black navy used for outlines, the spandrels and the main border ground. Green appears in measured amounts, a soft sage in the leaf tips and a deeper bottle green inside the border boteh. Ivory does the lighting work, carrying the medallion core, the guard bands and the fine outline that separates each flower from the red ground, and there is a warm camel and old-gold thread through the palmettes that keeps the whole thing from feeling cold. Small touches of rose pink in the border cartouches pick up the field. It is a classic burgundy and navy Persian colourway that sits well with dark woods, brass and cream walls.

Mashad and the Khorasan Weaving Tradition

Mashad sits in Khorasan in the northeast of Persia and has been a pilgrimage city for centuries, which is exactly why a serious commercial weaving industry grew there: money, patronage and a steady supply of good Khorasan wool in one place. The town's houses weave in a curvilinear, floral, medallion-and-corner style rather than the angular village manner, and they are known for a soft, slightly lustrous wool that takes red dye deeply, which is why so many Mashads are built on a red ground like this one. The knotting here is regular and fine enough to hold the thin vine stems and the outlined blossoms without the drawing turning blocky, and the 3/8" pile has been cut low enough to keep that detail crisp. If you want the background on the town, the houses and how to read quality in this weave, our Persian Mashad rugs guide covers it in full.