10' x 14'1" Persian Kashan Rug | Signed Red Medallion | Fine Wool Pile

This is a signed Persian Kashan rug in the classic town format, hand-knotted in fine wool on a cotton foundation and finished with a short 3/8" pile that keeps the drawing crisp. A woven cartouche in Persian script sits at one end of the field, the weaver's own mark and the sign of a workshop piece rather than an anonymous commercial run. At 10' x 14'1" it belongs with the 10 x 14 Persian rugs that anchor a full seating group or a long dining table with the chairs pulled back. The pile is full and even across the whole surface, the ends and sides are intact, and the rug ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The layout is the textbook Kashan composition, drawn with the curved line that separates a town weave from a village one. A navy lobed medallion sits dead center, stepped and cusped at the top and bottom, with an ivory inner cartouche holding a light blue rosette and two small red 8 petal blossoms. Above and below, matching pendants reach out along the long axis, each one tipped with a palmette. The red field around the medallion is not left open: it carries an all-over lattice of curling vine, serrated leaves, buds and palmettes that pack the ground without ever crowding it. The 4 corners are filled with deep navy spandrels edged in ivory tendrils, so the eye reads the medallion as floating inside a shaped reserve. The border system is generous, with a wide navy main band of alternating palmettes and rosettes linked by vine, flanked on both sides by light blue and ivory minor guards carrying a running flower and leaf meander.

The Color Palette

The field is a true madder red, warm and slightly blue in its depth rather than orange, the tone that makes red Persian rugs read as rich instead of loud. Against it, the medallion, spandrels and main border are a very dark indigo navy that goes almost black under low light and opens up to blue in daylight. The relief comes from ivory and cream, used for the medallion core, the outlining of every leaf and stem, and the narrow guard stripes, which is what keeps the dense floral work legible from standing height. Inside the flowers the weaver worked in a second, lighter sky blue, a soft sage and olive green for the leaves, rose pink for the smaller blossoms, and touches of gold and rust in the palmette hearts. The close-up of the border shows that light blue ground clearly, dotted with red, green and yellow boteh-like forms. It is a high contrast rug that still sits calmly in a room, because the reds and navies do the heavy lifting and the pastels appear only at the scale of a single flower.

Kashan: The Town and the Weave

Kashan sits in central Persia, north of Isfahan, and its looms trace back to the Safavid court workshops of the 16th century. The town is known for soft, lustrous local wool and for the formula this rug follows exactly: red field, navy lobed medallion, ivory spandrels, wide floral border. It is also the most recognizable Persian design in America, so much so that when you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. The back, shown here against a ruler, is tight and regular, with clean rows of wool knots on a cotton warp and a clear grid that lets the drawing hold its curves at this scale. A signature cartouche on a piece of this size means a named weaver put his name on a commission he was willing to be judged by, and a full pile in excellent condition means it was cared for after he did.