11'8" x 16'6" Persian Kerman Rug | Oversize Floral Medallion | 1960s Ruby Red Field

Woven in the 1960s and kept off the floor for most of its life, this 11'8" x 16'6" Kerman still carries a full, even wool pile and a ruby red that has deepened rather than faded. At 140 inches wide it belongs in the group of true oversize Persian rugs, large enough to carry a long dining table with all chairs pulled back or to anchor an entire great room without a stitch of visible floor at the seating group. The drawing is classic Kerman workshop work: a small ivory and navy medallion floating in a wide open ground, loose floral sprays scattered around it, and a broad multi-band border that does most of the talking. It ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a small cartouche-shaped medallion in ivory and peach, outlined in navy and filled with fine scrolling arabesque, with a single rose worked into the crown above and below. Around it the weaver drew a halo of pink roses, blue forget-me-nots and pale leaves, then let the field breathe: 8 large floral sprays sit at generous intervals across the ruby ground, each drawn as a cut branch with buds, open blossoms and curling leaves rather than as a repeating motif. The corner spandrels are large and lobed, filled with soft celadon and ivory palmettes that step inward and frame the field in a scalloped outline. The border runs in 3 main bands, a navy main band packed with roses, palmettes and scrolling vine between narrower light blue and ivory guard stripes, and the outer edge closes on ruby red with cream rosettes grouped in threes at each of the 4 corners. It is a formal, curvilinear drawing worked from a full cartoon, with nothing left to chance.

The Ruby Red and Pastel Palette

The field is a deep ruby red with a wine cast, saturated enough to read almost burgundy in low light and to lift toward cherry where the pile catches the sun, as it does in the angled photographs. Against it, the palette turns unexpectedly soft. The main border is a true navy, while the inner band and the spandrels are a dusty light blue that leans toward celadon, and the guard stripes are a warm peach-ivory. Flowers carry rose pink, salmon, cream and small hits of saffron gold, with leaf work in two greens, a bright grass green and a deeper olive. Individual blossoms are shaded across 3 or 4 tones so the roses appear rounded rather than flat. That combination of a dark red ground with cool blue and pastel drawing is the signature Kerman color sense, and it is what lets a rug this size sit with both antique furniture and plain contemporary upholstery.

Kerman Weaving in Southeast Persia

Kerman sits in the southeast of Persia, a desert city with a weaving record going back to the Safavid vase carpets and an unbroken workshop tradition ever since. Kerman weavers built their reputation on drawing and on color, on pictorial garden borders, rose-filled medallions and the ability to shade a single flower through several tones, all of it taken from a painted cartoon rather than from memory. The weave here is the standard fine Kerman construction, an asymmetric knot on a cotton foundation with multiple wefts packed between rows, which gives the back its tight, regular grain and gives the rug the body to lie flat over a span this long. The wool is the soft, lustrous local fleece Kerman is known for, and after 60 years the pile is still full from the outer guard stripe to the center. A piece of this size and finish came off a workshop loom with a team of weavers working months at a stretch, and it has aged the way good Kerman work does.