10' x 13' Persian Kerman Rug | Open Ruby Red Field with Floral Medallion | 1980s, Excellent Condition

Woven in the 1980s and still in excellent condition, this room-size Kerman has the full even pile and crisp drawing of a rug that was cared for rather than walked to death. The composition is the one experienced buyers watch for: a broad ruby red field left almost entirely open, a single layered floral medallion set dead center with pendants above and below, ivory corner spandrels, and a deep indigo surround that carries the eye out to a navy main border of flowering urns. Because the field is open rather than filled, the rug behaves like a color, sitting quietly under furniture instead of fighting it, which is why this format holds up so well in the 10 x 13 Persian rug range. It ships from our Freeport warehouse with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The medallion is built in layers: a small ivory cartouche at the very center holding a rosette, wrapped in a dark ground packed with roses, lotus blossoms and pale blue sprays, then ringed by white scrolling arabesques that curl outward like carved plasterwork. Bouquets float free of the medallion in the red field on all sides, a restrained touch that keeps the open ground breathing. Each of the 4 corners carries an ivory spandrel drawn with a large boteh paisley, small cornflowers and red blossoms, and those spandrels meet an indigo ground filled with a dense rose and palmette garden. The main border is the piece that dates the drawing to good Kerman practice: a navy ground with alternating footed urns of pink cabbage roses and upright sprays of white blossoms, flanked inside and out by ivory guard stripes of red rosettes and blue tulip buds, with a thin red outer stripe finishing the edge.

Color: Ruby Field, Indigo Surround, Ivory Spandrels

The field is a true ruby red, warm rather than orange, deepening toward crimson where the pile leans and softening to a rose tone under direct light. Around it the indigo surround reads almost inky at the corners and brightens to a clear cobalt across the long sides, and the medallion ground goes darker still, close to blue black, which is what makes the ivory center pop from across the room. Ivory does the structural work here, in the spandrels, in the guard stripes and in the scrolling vine, and it is a soft cream rather than a bleached white. Within that framework the palette is unusually broad for a red rug: rose pink and salmon in the cabbage roses, saffron and apricot in the smaller blossoms, gold yellow flecks, pale sky blue petals, and sage and bottle green throughout the leaves and stems. It is a natural anchor for a room already working in reds and burgundies, and it belongs with the better red and burgundy Persian rugs we stock.

Kerman Weaving and Quality

Kerman sits in the far southeast of Persia, and its weavers have worked from paper designs prepared by a professional designer for centuries, which is why a Kerman looks drawn rather than assembled. The curved line here never breaks: the arabesques stay round, the urns keep their symmetry across the full 13 foot length, and the guard stripes hold their rhythm through every corner turn, all of which takes a designer and a loom master working together rather than a weaver improvising. The pictorial garden border, urns and flowering shrubs read as a picture, is the signature Kerman contribution to Persian design, and it is handled confidently on this piece. The pile is soft local wool on a cotton foundation, knotted fine enough to resolve individual petals and leaf veins, as the close-up photographs show, and it has been shorn to a medium height that still feels plush underfoot. The ivory cotton fringe is intact and the selvages are sound on both sides.