11'10" x 18'9" Persian Kerman Rug | Ivory Open Field | Blue Floral Medallion and Garden Border

This is a true palace piece, 11'10" x 18'9" of hand-knotted wool on a cotton foundation, and the first thing you notice is how much of it is left empty. The ivory field runs almost uninterrupted from the medallion out to the border, which is the hardest thing a weaver can do: any unevenness in the wool or the knotting shows immediately across that much open ground, and here it does not. The drawing is concentrated where it counts, in the blue medallion at the center, the four flowering corner sprays and the deep blue garden border that frames the whole thing. Rugs like this were woven for long formal rooms, and among oversize 12x18 Persian rugs the open ivory ground remains the most livable choice, because it lightens a room instead of filling it. Every rug we ship carries a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

At the center sits an elongated lobed medallion on a blue ground, filled with palmettes, small rosettes and serrated leaves, and finished top and bottom with slender pendants that trail into flowering sprays. Around it the field stays bare except for those sprays and the 4 corner bouquets, each one a bundle of cypress-like foliage, roses and budding stems drawn in the naturalistic Kerman manner rather than in stylized geometry. The border is the real event: a wide blue band carrying a continuous garden of scrolling acanthus, curled palmettes, blossoming vines and ivory cartouche forms, with a narrow floral guard stripe on either side and a plain ivory outer band that lets the pattern breathe. Look closely at the close-up photographs and you can see how every flower head is outlined in a darker tone, which is what gives the drawing its depth from across a room.

A Closer Look at the Ivory and Blue Palette

The field is a warm ivory that moves between cream and pale champagne depending on the light and on the direction of the pile, with a faintly golden cast along the ends where the nap lies away from you. Against it, the border and medallion read as a soft slate blue, closer to teal than to navy, cooled further by the ivory scrollwork laid over it. Inside that blue ground the weaver worked in salmon and apricot for the larger palmettes, rose pink and raspberry for the small blossoms, sage and olive green for the leaf work, and short strokes of dark navy for the outlines. Nothing is loud. The whole palette is built on tone rather than contrast, which is why the rug sits comfortably with both antique furniture and plain modern upholstery, and why it works so well in rooms where the walls are already doing the talking.

Kerman: The Weaving Town and the Quality

Kerman sits in the southeast of Persia, a high desert city with a weaving tradition that reaches back to the Safavid era and a long reputation for two things: pictorial and garden borders, and wool soft enough to take a curved line without breaking it. Kerman weavers work from detailed cartoons on a cotton foundation with an asymmetric knot, which is what allows the flowing vinework and the rounded palmette shapes you see here rather than the angular drawing of village weaving. On a piece this large, that discipline has to hold for 18'9" without the medallion drifting off center or the border pattern falling out of step at the corners, and on this rug the 4 corners resolve cleanly. The pile is full and evenly sheared, the ivory cotton fringe is original and intact at both ends, and the handle is heavy and supple in the way good Kerman wool stays for generations. It belongs with the best oversized Persian rugs we carry.