11' x 13'9" Antique Persian Kashan Rug | Soft Red Floral Field | Navy Border with Ivory Medallion

Laid out flat at 11' x 13'9", this piece does what the old Persian Kashan rugs were built to do: fill a formal room corner to corner and hold it together with one drawn floral scheme. The pile is wool on a cotton foundation, the handle is supple, and the condition is excellent, with the even low sheen that good Kashan wool keeps as it ages. It sits in the same footprint family as our other large 11x14 Persian rugs, and it ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming it as a hand-knotted rug woven in Persia.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a lobed navy medallion with stepped ivory outlining, filled with a small rosette core, paired tulip and palmette forms and 4 lattice panels set at the cardinal points. Above and below it, long serrated pendants run out into the field and end in ivory finials. The field itself is never left empty: detached floral sprays, curled acanthus leaves, carnations, rosettes and budding stems repeat in mirrored pairs across the whole surface, drawn in the flowing curvilinear line that separates a workshop Kashan from village work. The 4 corners carry heavy spandrels in the same navy, each a dense bouquet outlined in ivory. The main border is a wide indigo band of alternating palmettes and rosettes joined by a thin scrolling vine, framed by narrow reciprocal guard stripes. In one section of that border a camel ground cartouche carries woven script, the small workshop inscription panel shown in the close-up photograph.

A Soft Red Field Read Against Indigo and Ivory

The ground is a soft red, closer to a warm rose madder than a hard scarlet, and it shifts gently between panels of light as the pile lies. Against it the border reads as a deep indigo blue that goes almost black in shadow, which is what gives the rug its weight on a pale floor. Ivory does the drawing work: outlines around the medallion, the pendants and the spandrels, plus cream blossoms scattered through the field. The secondary palette is where this one gets interesting, with teal and sea green leaves, salmon and pale pink petals, small notes of light blue in the lattice squares, and soft camel and brown in the cartouche panel and the leaf shading. Nothing is loud, and the whole combination sits comfortably with walnut, oak and antique mahogany furniture.

Kashan Weaving in Central Persia

Kashan lies in central Persia, north of Isfahan, and its weaving tradition runs straight back to the Safavid court workshops. The town built its name on 2 things: soft, lustrous local wool that takes dye deeply, and the classic formula of a red field, a navy lobed medallion and ivory spandrels, worked at a knot count fine enough to carry curved line. That formula became the most recognizable Persian look in America, and it is still the one you see on screen: when you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. The back of this rug, shown against a ruler, is tight and even, the knots regular across the width, with original selvedges and cotton fringe at both ends. A rug this size in wool at this level of drawing was a workshop commission, not a quick weave, and it has the structure to stay under furniture for another generation.