11'6" x 19'5" Antique Persian Khorasan Rug | All-Over Vine, Palmette and Boteh Design | Signed 1940s Palace Size

Woven in the 1940s in Khorasan, the far northeast of Persia, this 11'6" x 19'5" rug is a true palace format: one unbroken sheet of hand-knotted fine wool long enough to sit under a 14 foot dining table with room for chairs on all 4 sides, or to floor a great room end to end. The drawing is all-over rather than centered on a medallion, a repeating system of spiraling vines, palmettes and boteh worked across a deep burgundy ground, and 80 years of settling have given the wool the quiet sheen that only real age produces. It is catalogued as a signed workshop piece. The rug ships with a certificate of authenticity, and like all of our oversize Persian rugs it travels free to all 50 states rather than carrying a freight surcharge.

Design and Motifs

The field is a classic Khorasan all-over design: heavy silver-grey vine scrolls curl into full spirals, each one closing around a single ivory or pale blue rosette, while lance leaves, split palmettes and small cypress-like sprays fill the ground between them. Down the long axis the weaver set a column of large boteh, drawn in yellow-green with tiny blossoms inside the outline, and repeated them in blue and sage across the width so the pattern reads as a mirrored repeat rather than a random scatter. The borders are the other half of the story. A wide navy main band carries alternating rose and gold palmettes on curling stems, flanked by a sky blue floral band on the inside and a red palmette band on the outside, with narrow ivory dentil stripes, an orange-rust vine guard and a fine reciprocal edge finishing the run. All 4 corners resolve cleanly, which on a rug this long is the tell of a drawn cartoon and a disciplined loom.

The Burgundy Field and Its Antique Palette

The ground is a deep burgundy red that shifts gently from cherry to wine as the light moves across the pile, the natural abrash of hand-dyed yarn rather than any flaw. Against it the weaver ran a full antique palette: indigo navy in the main border and in the palmette centers, a lighter sky blue in the secondary band and in dozens of small cornflower blossoms, ivory and cream in the rosettes, dentil stripes and outlines, soft rose and salmon pink in the flower heads, a mossy green in the leaves, chocolate brown in the seed centers, and gold to citron yellow in the boteh and the larger blossoms. Rust orange appears only in one narrow guard stripe, which is exactly where it does the most work, separating navy from ivory and keeping the border stack legible. Seen from the far end of a room the rug reads as a warm red and blue, and only up close does the green, gold and pink detail come forward.

Khorasan Origin and Weaving Quality

Khorasan is the northeastern province of Persia and its weaving capital is Mashad, where the great city workshops built their reputation on curvilinear drawing, long-staple local wool and pieces cut to palace dimensions. The Saber name attached to this rug belongs to that workshop lineage, and everything in the weave supports a town piece rather than a village one: a taut cotton foundation, a low even clip, fine outlining in a single knot width, and a pattern held true across nearly 20 feet of length. Anyone who wants the background can read our Persian Mashad rugs guide, and the palette, the wool and the handle here line up with the standard markers used to date an antique Oriental rug to the middle of the last century. The pile is full and even across the whole surface, the ends are secure with their original cotton kilim and fringe, and the sides are intact, which is uncommon on a piece of this age and scale.