11'10" x 19'8" Persian Kashan Rug | Ivory All-Over Floral Field | Signed Oversize Palace Piece

Rolled out at 11'10" x 19'8", this signed Kashan is a palace piece in the true sense: one continuous ivory field, nearly 20 feet of uninterrupted floral drawing, and not a single shortcut where the weavers could have repeated themselves. It takes a loom of serious width and a workshop with the patience to keep the vine scrolling in register from one end to the other, which is exactly why pieces in this class are scarce among oversize Persian rugs. The pile is fine lustrous wool on a cotton foundation, the fringe is hand tied and fully intact, and the condition is perfect, with no repairs, no thin spots and no color run. A certificate of authenticity is issued with the rug.

Design and Motifs

There is no central medallion here. The whole field is given over to an all-over lattice of curling saz leaves and arabesque vines, with palmettes, rosettes and small multi-petal blossoms set at every turn of the scroll. The drawing mirrors across the long axis and repeats in staggered rows, so the eye reads a single continuous garden rather than a grid, and the 4 corners resolve cleanly instead of being cut off mid motif. The main border carries alternating large palmettes and cupped blossoms linked by a fine navy vine, flanked on both sides by narrow guard stripes of ivory meander and small reciprocal florets. At one end of the main border sits the woven cartouche, the weaver's signature panel, which on a piece of this size is the clearest possible marker of a workshop commission rather than a village copy.

The Ivory, Green and Blue Palette

The field is a warm ivory, closer to unbleached cream than to white, and it picks up light the way only good Kashan wool does, shifting a half tone as you walk around it. Against that ground the floral work is drawn mostly in blues: deep navy for the outlines and leaf spines, a clear sky blue for the palmette hearts, and a soft powder blue that softens the whole field from a distance. The main border steps away from the field into a muted sage green, a pistachio tone rather than an emerald, which is an unusual and very collectible choice for this design and is the reason the rug feels calm instead of formal. Small accents of rust, terracotta, dusty rose, ochre and a touch of deep red sit inside the larger flower heads, just enough warmth to keep the ivory and green from reading cold. Guard stripes in cream and pale blue separate the border from the field with a crisp outline.

Kashan Weaving and the Quality of This Piece

Kashan sits in central Persia, north of Isfahan, and its looms have been working in the Safavid court tradition for centuries. The city is known for soft lustrous local wool, a tight cotton foundation and a curvilinear style of drawing that only holds together at a high knot count, all of which show here in the back photograph, where the knot rows are even and small enough to carry the fine vine work without breaking the curve. Persian Kashan rugs are also the most recognizable Persian weave in American living rooms: when you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. A signed, perfect-condition example at 11'10" x 19'8" is a different order of thing entirely, the sort of rug a workshop put its name on because it expected the piece to outlive everyone involved.