12' x 13'6" Persian Kerman Rug | Coral Red Open Field | Ivory Floral Medallion | Semi-Antique 1940s

A near square room-size piece from the 1940s, this rug measures 12' x 13'6" and carries the classic Kerman formula: a broad coral red field left almost entirely open, a single scalloped ivory medallion floating dead center, and floral spandrels that spill inward from all 4 corners. The pile is 3/8" wool on a cotton foundation, still full and even across the whole surface after eight decades, with the soft light that only older hand-spun wool gives back. The unusual width makes it one of the few genuine oversize Persian rugs that will square off a wide room instead of running long down it. Every rug we ship carries our certificate of authenticity, stating origin, age, materials and knotting by hand.

Design and Motifs

The center medallion is built in concentric rings: a salmon pink rosette core, then a ring of cream petals outlined in black, then a scalloped ivory and pale gold cartouche edge, finished top and bottom with slim finials that reach out into the open ground. Around it the drawing loosens into naturalistic sprays, tulips, carnations, small daisies and curling acanthus leaves, drawn flower by flower rather than repeated from a grid. The 4 spandrels are dense pictorial gardens of blossom and vine, and the wide main border repeats large rose palmettes and leaf cartouches at regular intervals, framed by narrow floral guard stripes and a thin meander. That pictorial garden border is the Kerman signature, and here it is drawn with real confidence: the field is quiet on purpose so the medallion and the border can do the talking.

Coral Red, Indigo Blue and Soft Green

The field is a warm coral red, closer to terracotta than to blood red, and it shifts subtly with the light across such a large open area, the mark of small dye lots used honestly. Against it the main border reads almost black until you look closely, then resolves into a deep indigo blue crowded with salmon, rose and cream. Blue appears in two registers: a clear mid blue in the small blossoms scattered through the field surround, and the dark indigo of the border ground and the medallion outlines. Green runs quietly through the leafwork, an olive and sage rather than a bright green. Ivory, cream and pale gold carry the medallion and the guard stripes, while salmon pink softens the whole palette, which is why this rug sits comfortably with warm woods, cream walls and antique furniture without shouting.

Kerman Weaving and the 1940s Period

Kerman sits in southeast Persia and has been a workshop city, not a village weaving area, for centuries. Its weavers work from a full-scale cartoon, which is what allows the curved medallion outlines and the flower-by-flower border drawing you see here, and Kerman wool takes dye with a clarity that keeps pastels from going muddy. A 1940s date places this piece in the semi-antique bracket, late enough to have survived with full pile, old enough that the wool was hand-spun and the reds were laid in with restraint. If you want to understand how weavers, dealers and collectors read age from wool, drawing and back structure, our guide on how to date an Oriental rug walks through the same tells visible on the reverse of this rug.