10' x 13'7" Persian Kashan Rug | Ivory Floral Medallion | Signed Workshop Cartouche

This is a full room size Persian Kashan rug in the pale register that Kashan workshops reserve for their most formal commissions: an ivory ground, a softly drawn medallion and a border that reads almost as a single tone until you stand over it. At 10' x 13'7" it covers a true seating group or a 10 seat dining table without crowding the walls, and it belongs with the 10 x 14 Persian rugs that suit open plan American rooms. The pile is 3/8" wool on a cotton foundation, the handle is firm and even end to end, and the condition is excellent with full pile across the field and clean, straight sides. A cartouche is woven into the upper border, which places it as a named workshop piece rather than anonymous village work. Every rug ships with a certificate of authenticity from Rugs.net.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a lobed medallion built out of scalloped cartouche shapes around an 8 petal rosette, with a pendant dropping from each end and matching quarter medallions filling the 4 corners. What makes this piece unusual is how lightly the medallion is drawn: it is stated in outline and shading rather than in a block of contrasting color, so the eye reads the whole field first and the medallion second. Around it runs a dense all-over system of curling vine, Shah Abbasi palmettes, feathered leaves and small rosettes, every stem resolving into a flower rather than trailing off. The border is a stack of narrow guard stripes framing one wide floral band of alternating palmettes and rosettes on a taupe ground, with the same curvilinear discipline as the field. The drawing stays symmetrical through all 4 quarters, which is the mark of a cartoon followed closely by weavers who knew the design.

A Quiet Ivory Field with Navy and Red Brown Accents

The field is ivory shading toward warm cream, with broad passages of soft taupe where the medallion and the vine scrolls are shaded in. Against that pale ground the accents do all the work: navy blue outlines every palmette and every stem, red brown fills the larger flower heads, and small strikes of celadon green, pale sky blue, ochre and a clear tomato red appear inside individual blossoms. Seen from across a room the rug reads as a single soft neutral, which is why it sits easily with grey upholstery, walnut furniture and white walls. Up close, in the detail photographs, the palette is far richer than the overall impression suggests. Buyers working in a light scheme should look at it alongside our other ivory Persian rugs, because few of them carry this much color inside a neutral ground.

Kashan Origin and Weaving Quality

Kashan sits in central Persia, north of Isfahan, and its workshops trace their drawing directly back to the Safavid court tradition. The local wool is soft and lustrous, which is why a Kashan holds its sheen for generations of use, and why the town became the default choice for American living rooms: when you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. Most Kashans you see are the classic red field with a navy medallion, so an ivory ground piece of this scale is the harder one to find. The back photograph shows small, regular knots in tidy rows with no pull or waviness, the pile is beat down evenly, and the cotton warps run straight, all signs of a loom kept under tension and a pair of weavers working in rhythm. The woven cartouche in the border seals it as a signed workshop rug.