10' x 13' Persian Isfahan Rug | Ivory Medallion on Graphite Blue Field | Wool and Silk Pile

Laid out flat, this 10' x 13' rug reads as one continuous garden rather than a design with breathing room: a graphite blue ground packed corner to corner with palmettes, rosettes and curling vine, with a single ivory and lavender medallion anchoring the center. The pile is clipped low at 1/4 inch and the wool is blended with silk, so the gold and ivory blossoms lift away from the dark ground as soon as light crosses the surface. It is a genuine room-size piece that will carry a full seating group or a 10 seat dining table, and it sits in the most practical of the big formats, our 10x13 Persian rugs. Woven in central Persia, this Persian Isfahan rug ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The field is a classic all-over floral in the Isfahan manner: large lobed palmettes and 8 petal rosettes linked by a thin scrolling vine that never repeats in an obvious block, with split leaves, small buds and tiny cypress-like forms filling the gaps between the bigger flowers. The medallion is a round, 16 point starburst in ivory and pale lavender, built from a ring of curved boteh forms around a single yellow rosette at the dead center, and it is left without matching corner spandrels so the floral field runs unbroken to the borders. The frame is a wide dark main border carrying alternating palmettes and leafy sprays on the same blue ground as the field, flanked on both sides by pale lavender guard stripes drawn with a running vine, with narrow sawtooth and diamond stripes on the outermost edge. The drawing stays curvilinear throughout, with the flowers on the two long sides mirrored across the center axis, which is the mark of a cartoon drawn properly rather than copied loosely.

A Graphite Blue Ground Lit by Ivory and Gold

The ground color is graphite blue, a dense blue-black that reads almost charcoal in a dim room and opens into true blue under daylight or a lamp, which is why the overhead and the close-up photographs look like two different rugs. Against it the palette is warm and restrained: soft ivory and bone for the smaller blossoms, saffron and old gold for the big palmettes and for the thin outline around the medallion, pale lavender grey through the medallion core and the guard stripes, muted sage and teal green in the leaves, and pinpoints of tomato red at the flower centers that do the work of waking the whole surface up. There is no harsh white and no bright pastel anywhere, so the rug sits comfortably with walnut and oak floors, cream or taupe walls, and leather or linen upholstery. Buyers working the dark end of the spectrum should file this with the navy and blue Persian rugs rather than the ivory ones, since the blue governs the room and the ivory only accents it.

Isfahan: Central Persia and the Weave Behind the Drawing

Isfahan sits in central Persia and has been a workshop city since the Safavid court set up weaving there in the 16th century. Its reputation rests entirely on drawing: the curved line, the continuous vine, the ability to turn a petal cleanly, and none of that is possible on a coarse weave, which is why Isfahan work is built on a tightly spun cotton foundation and finished with a low clipped pile. That is exactly what you see here. The corner and reverse photographs show small, even knots in straight rows and a crisp edge finish, and the ruler image gives a sense of how many rows of knots are packed into an inch of weave. The pile mixes wool with silk used as highlight, which is the traditional Isfahan approach: the wool does the wearing and the silk sits in the flower heads and the medallion to catch light. At 1/4 inch the pile is low enough to take dining chairs and traffic without crushing, and the surface is dense enough that the pattern stays legible from standing height.