10' x 15'5" Persian Isfahan Design Rug | Najafabad Weave | Red Field, Navy Floral Border, Excellent Condition

This is a room filling 10' x 15'5" hand-knotted Persian rug woven in Najafabad, the weaving town just west of Isfahan that works in the same curvilinear tradition as the city ateliers. The wool pile stands at 3/8", short enough to hold the fine drawing of the medallion and the thin arabesque vines, and the whole field is still tight and even with no thin areas, making this an honest excellent condition piece rather than a restored one. The cotton foundation gives it the flat, heavy lie that these large Persian Isfahan rugs are known for, and at this scale it will sit flat under a long dining table or anchor a great room wall to wall. Every rug we ship carries a certificate of authenticity confirming it as a genuine hand-knotted Persian piece.

Design and Motifs

The layout is the classic Isfahan formula, drawn at full scale. A navy 16 point medallion sits dead center, built in concentric rings around a small rose and celadon rosette, with a pale blue outer ring carrying paired palmettes and tiny leaf sprays. Above and below it, matching navy pendants reach out into the field on a thin stem. The red ground between them is not left open: it is filled edge to edge with an all-over system of scrolling arabesque vines, split palmettes, lotus heads and small blossoms, each flower outlined in ivory so the pattern reads clearly from across the room. The 4 corner spandrels are ivory, carrying their own vine work with pale blue and olive leaves, and they frame the field in the shape of a wide lobed cartouche. The main border is a navy band of large palmettes and tulip forms alternating with pink and rose blossoms, flanked on both sides by ivory guard stripes and a further pale blue outer stripe of small repeating flowers. Six border lines in total, each one drawn cleanly and turned correctly at the corners, which is a fair test of a weaver's skill at this size.

A Crimson Field Against Navy, Ivory and Soft Blue

The dominant color is a warm crimson red, clear rather than orange-leaning, with the gentle depth of variation that wool takes from natural looking dye lots. Set against it, the navy of the medallion and main border reads almost ink dark in low light and opens up to a true blue where the light catches the pile. Between those two poles the weaver used a full secondary palette: ivory and cream for the spandrels, guard stripes and the outlines of every flower, a soft powder blue that appears in the medallion ring, the outer border stripe and scattered blossoms across the field, olive and sage green in the leaves, rose pink and dusty mauve in the border palmettes, and small touches of chocolate brown and pale gold in the vine work. The ivory spandrels and cream guard borders do the structural work here, lifting the design away from the red and keeping a rug of this size from reading as one heavy block of color. In a room with warm wood floors, cream or oatmeal walls and dark furniture, the red and navy combination carries the whole scheme.

Najafabad and the Isfahan Weaving Tradition

Isfahan sits in central Persia and has been a court weaving center since the Safavid workshops of the 16th century. Its reputation rests on drawing: the curved line, the flowing vine and the precision of a repeat that never quite repeats. Najafabad, a short distance west of the city, weaves to the same drawings on the same cotton warp, and its looms have long specialized in the larger formats that the city workshops rarely take on, which is exactly why a piece like this exists at 10' x 15'5". The wool is local and takes a soft luster as it is walked on, and the 3/8" clipped pile keeps the fine detail of the medallion legible instead of blurring it. Pieces at this scale are genuinely scarce, and buyers shopping oversize Persian rugs know that finding one in excellent condition with a formal Isfahan drawing is far harder than finding a 9x12. The back photograph shows the weave and the original workshop label, both consistent with a well made Najafabad piece of this type.