10' x 17'1" Persian Kashan Rug | Red Floral Medallion | Signed Oversize Piece

This is a big, serious Kashan: 10' x 17'1" of hand-knotted wool on a cotton foundation, woven in central Persia in the classic court formula of a deep red field, a navy lobed medallion and a wide indigo main border. It is one of the more useful proportions in oversize Persian rugs, long enough for a full dining table or a double seating group without breaking the pattern across two pieces. The end border carries a woven signature cartouche, which tells you this came off a named workshop loom rather than an anonymous village one. The pile is full and even, the colors have settled the way good vegetable-dyed wool does, and the rug ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The drawing follows the textbook Kashan layout and executes it with unusual density. At the center sits a lobed navy medallion built in layers: a sky blue rosette core, an ivory cartouche ring, then scalloped navy edges finished with slender pendant finials top and bottom. Four ivory corner spandrels answer the medallion and lock the composition at the 4 corners. Between them the field is not empty for a single inch, filled instead with curling arabesque vines, split palmettes, lancet leaves and small multi-petal rosettes that mirror across both axes. The main border runs a navy ground with alternating palmettes and flowering vine scroll, framed by ivory guard stripes of running meander and small crosses, and the outer guards repeat in miniature what the field does at scale. The signature cartouche, worked into the border on a green, ivory and red ground, is the detail collectors look for first.

The Color Palette

The field is a true madder red, warm rather than orange, with the faint tonal movement that comes from hand-dyed yarn batches rather than a printed flat tone. Against it the border and medallion read as a deep indigo navy that goes almost black in the shaded photographs and opens up to blue under lamplight. The drawing itself is carried in ivory and cream, which is what keeps a field this busy legible from across a room, and it is lifted by two lighter blues: a soft sky blue in the medallion core and small flowerheads, and a mid slate blue in the outer guard stripe. Sage green leaves and a scattering of dusty rose and soft camel tones round the palette out. Red and navy is the pairing that makes Kashan rugs work with mahogany, walnut and dark leather, while the ivory keeps the whole thing from going heavy.

Kashan Origin and Weaving Quality

Kashan sits in central Persia north of Isfahan and has been weaving since the Safavid court workshops, which is why the town's output looks formal even at village scale: soft lustrous local wool, a tight cotton warp and weft, and a curved-line drawing tradition that other regions render in straight angles. The reverse of this piece shows a clean, regular knot with crisp color separation, the sign of a weaver working from a proper cartoon rather than memory, and a rug of this length holding its medallion perfectly on axis over 17 feet is a workshop achievement in itself. If you want the background on the town, the dye recipes and how to grade a piece, our guide to Persian Kashan rugs covers it. And yes, this is the design you keep seeing on television: when you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor.