10' x 14' Persian Kashan Rug | Deep Ruby Red Floral Medallion | 1940s Kork Wool

This is a room size antique from the 1940s that has kept its pile, its dye depth and its drawing intact, which is not something you can say about most rugs of its generation. It measures 10' x 14', it is hand-knotted on a cotton foundation in fine kork wool, and the field is a deep ruby red carrying a navy lobed medallion and an unbroken carpet of vine work. Roll a corner back, as in the sixth photo, and the design reads almost as cleanly on the reverse as on the face, which tells you the knot count is well above village work. Anyone shopping for a genuine antique Persian Kashan rug in a true 10 by 14 footprint knows how rarely one surfaces in this condition. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity documenting origin, materials and age.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a navy lobed medallion built in layers: an ivory core filled with green and rose rosettes, a ring of turquoise blue florals, then a navy surround of curling arabesque and cypress-like leaf forms outlined in soft tan. Stepped pendants run off the medallion at top and bottom, each one a small navy cartouche with its own blossom, and the same navy repeats in the spandrels that fill the 4 corners of the field. Everything between is allover drawing rather than open ground: serrated lanceolate leaves, palmettes, multi-petal rosettes, tiny boteh paisley forms and thin flowering stems that curl back on themselves in the classic Kashan manner. The border system runs 5 bands deep. A wide navy main border carries alternating palmettes and rosettes on a scrolling vine, flanked by a teal blue vine stripe on one side and a warm ivory rosette stripe on the other, with narrow red-brown guard lines separating each. One border panel, visible in the end detail photo, breaks into a pink and green cartouche filled with stylized animal forms, a small piece of weaver's wit that antique Kashan drawing often allows.

A Deep Ruby Red Field with Navy, Teal and Sea Green

The ground colour is a deep ruby red with a wine cast, dark enough to feel formal and lit from within where the kork wool catches light, which is why the field looks closer to garnet in the close-up photographs and closer to true red in the overhead view. Against it the weaver set an inky navy for the medallion, spandrels and main border, and then softened the whole thing with a run of mid tones: teal blue in the inner guard border, a cool sea green in the leaves, rose pink and salmon in the blossoms, ivory in the outlining and the outer stripe, with small hits of gold ochre and rust in the flower centers. The pink and green are what date the palette; they are the sort of gentler secondary tones Kashan workshops favoured in the middle of the last century, and 80 years of mellowing has taken any harshness out of them. Ivory cotton fringe finishes both ends and the selvages are tight and original.

Kashan: The Town and the Weave

Kashan sits in central Persia, north of Isfahan, and its looms trace back to the Safavid court workshops. The town's reputation rests on soft lustrous local wool and on one formula it has never needed to improve: a red field, a navy lobed medallion, ivory spandrels and floral drawing carried edge to edge, which is exactly what this rug is. It is also the most familiar Persian design in American rooms, and if you want proof, when you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. The weave here is city workshop quality rather than village, with fine kork wool knotted on a cotton foundation tightly enough to hold the curved line of the vine scroll without a break, and even pile depth across all 140 square feet. If you are comparing pieces at this footprint, our full range of 10 x 14 Persian rugs is worth a look, and our guide on how to date an antique rug explains the wear, dye and back signals we used to place this one in the 1940s.