2' x 2'5" Persian Qum Rug | Garden Panel Kheshti Design | 1970s Square Wool Mat

Small enough to carry under one arm, this Persian Qum rug fits a complete 35 panel garden composition into 2' x 2'5". It was hand-knotted in the 1970s in wool on a cotton foundation, and half a century on the pile is still full and level, with the original ivory fringe intact at both ends. Pieces at this scale were woven as calling cards for a workshop, proof of how small a knot the weaver could tie and how fine a line the designer could draw, which is why baby rugs and workshop samples have always been the easiest way into collecting: they frame beautifully, hang on a wall like a painting, make serious gifts, and cost a fraction of a room-size piece. It ships with a certificate of authenticity and arrives in perfect condition.

Design and Motifs

The field is ruled into 35 compartments, 5 across and 7 down, each outlined by a narrow reciprocating vine that reads like leading in a stained glass window. Three panel types rotate through the grid. The first is an ivory square holding a slender tree of life, its chestnut trunk splitting into thin branches hung with sage and brown leaves. The second is a lobed rosette medallion, an 8 petal flower head on a turquoise, crimson or near-black ground with tiny corner blossoms. The third is an architectural panel: a pair of twisted columns carrying a scalloped arch, with a flowering sprig standing between them. This is the kheshti or garden panel scheme, sometimes called the four seasons layout, and drawing it legibly inside 24" x 29" is the whole point of the piece. Five borders wrap the field, from a plain crimson outer edge through a repeating leaf-form guard stripe to a wider band of scrolling palmettes on ivory, with hairline pearled stripes separating each one.

A Multi-Color Palette Anchored in Crimson and Ivory

Crimson red does the structural work here: it forms the outer selvage band, the innermost guard stripe and roughly a third of the panel grounds, and it gives the little rug its warmth from across a room. Against it the weaver set a clean ivory that carries every tree of life panel and the main border, so the composition never turns heavy. The surprise is the turquoise, a bright sky blue used whole-cloth as a panel ground in a checker rhythm through the grid, cool enough to throw the reds forward. Rose pink and salmon fill the rosette petals and soften the transitions, indigo and near-black grounds anchor the darkest squares, and olive to moss green runs through the leaf work with chestnut brown in the branches and the border scroll. Small notes of white at the flower centers keep the drawing sharp. The overall reading is multi-color, but it is a controlled multi-color: red, ivory and turquoise carry the eye, everything else is detail.

Qum: Persia's Youngest Great Weaving City

Qum sits on the desert edge roughly 75 miles south of Tehran and began weaving commercially only in the 1930s, late by Persian standards. With no village tradition of its own to defend, the city built its name on fineness alone, borrowing classical designs from Kashan, Isfahan and the Bakhtiari garden panel and then out-knotting everyone. Qum workshops are known above all for the finest silk and for soft kork wool, and the rivalry between ateliers is what keeps the standard high. This example is wool pile on a cotton foundation, and the weave tells the story: the knot count is high enough to turn a 2 inch column and a 1 inch rosette without a single stepped line, the back is flat and even, and the selvages are still tight. Among small Persian rugs, a 1970s Qum in this state is the kind of piece collectors buy first and keep longest.