11'7" x 17' Signed Persian Isfahan Rug | Red Field Floral Medallion | 1970s Oversize

This 11'7" x 17' piece is a full palace-scale floor, hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation in the 1970s and signed by its weaver in a small ivory cartouche set into the top border. Pieces like this belong to the small group of Persian Isfahan rugs woven at a size no single loom operator could finish alone, and the drawing holds its symmetry from end to end across all 17 feet. The pile is even, the colors are unfaded, and there are no repairs or reweaves anywhere in the field. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity that records the origin, materials, age and exact dimensions of the individual piece. For buyers whose constraint is floor space rather than style, this sits squarely in oversize Persian rugs, a category where genuine hand-knotted examples in this condition are scarce.

Design and Motifs

The layout is the classic Isfahan formula worked out at scale: a lobed central medallion with an ivory core, ringed by a deep indigo band of split palmettes, radiating outward into a 16 point starburst of curling leaves and rosettes. Above and below the medallion sit matching pendant cartouches, and the 4 corners carry pale spandrels that repeat the medallion drawing in quarter form. The red ground between them is not left open. It is filled edge to edge with a dense, mirrored vine system of palmettes, cypress-like leaflets, 8 petal rosettes and small blossoms, each outlined in ivory so the pattern reads clearly from standing height. The main border runs a navy ground of alternating palmettes and flower sprays linked by a continuous vine, flanked by ivory guard stripes of smaller blossoms and a narrow lavender minor stripe. The signature cartouche breaks the top border at the center, the maker's mark that turns a good rug into a documented one.

The Color Palette: Madder Red, Indigo and Ivory

The field is a clear madder red, warm rather than orange, and it stays consistent across the full width with only the gentlest tonal movement where the wool takes the dye differently. Against it the border reads as a true indigo navy, dark enough to frame the rug firmly without turning black. Ivory does the linework throughout: it outlines every vine, fills the guard stripes and forms the pale heart of the medallion, where it shades through cream into a soft dove grey. The secondary colors are where this palette gets its life, with olive and moss green leaves, gold and camel palmettes, rust and burnt orange blossom centers, and a distinctive powder blue that appears in the small flowers of the field and again in the minor stripes. Deep aubergine and chocolate brown outlines add weight at the edges of the larger motifs. It is a warm, saturated scheme that carries a large room without going dark.

Isfahan: Weaving Town and Weaving Quality

Isfahan sits in central Persia and has been a weaving center since the Safavid court workshops of the 16th century, when the city set the standard for curvilinear design that the rest of the country followed. The reputation of the town rests on drawing rather than on decoration alone: the flowing vine, the true curved line, the precision with which a medallion resolves into its spandrels. That is exactly what to look at here. Woven in the 1970s on a cotton warp and weft with a hand-spun wool pile, this example is a solid, room-sized workshop piece rather than a fine kork and silk collector's rug, and it is built accordingly, with a firm handle and a pile with real substance underfoot. The weaver's signature in the border tells you it left the loom as an identified piece, and at 11'7" x 17' it was drawn for a hall, a formal reception room or a long open floor where the full pattern can be seen at once.