3'7" x 5'5" Persian Nain Rug | Navy Blue All Over Floral | 6La Wool & Silk, Approx. 400 KPSI

This is a small piece that behaves like a large one. At 3'7" x 5'5" the drawing is not simplified for the scale: the entire field carries a full repeat of curling vine and palmette work at roughly 400 knots per square inch, which is the fineness a 6La Nain weave is built for. The pile is wool with silk outlining the vinework, and you can see it in the photographs where the cream tendrils catch light differently than the wool ground around them. It is a 2000's production in perfect condition, with full pile, straight sides and clean hand-tied fringe. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity. If you want the background on the town and its grading system, our complete guide to Nain rugs covers it, and the wider selection of 4x6 Persian rugs sits alongside this one.

Design and Motifs

There is no central medallion here. The navy field is covered edge to edge with an all over islimi lattice: thin pale vines that loop, cross and re-cross to form a repeating ogee grid, with a palmette or a serrated leaf cluster seated inside each compartment. Small rosettes and buds fill the spaces the vines leave behind, so there is almost no open ground anywhere in the field. The ivory main border runs a stately alternation of upright floral sprays and vase-like palmettes, joined by a thin meandering vine, and it is bracketed by narrow guard stripes carrying a running bud motif. All 4 corners resolve properly, with the border pattern turning the angle rather than being cut off, which is the detail that separates a drawn cartoon from a copied one.

A Navy Field Read Against Ivory and Silk

The ground is a deep, saturated navy blue, closer to midnight than to royal, and it reads almost black in the shadowed folds of the close-up photographs before opening up to true blue in direct light. Against it, the vine tracery is a pale ice blue, the palmettes are cream and soft beige, and the flower heads pick up warm brown, russet and a light peach that keeps the palette from going cold. The main border is a warm ivory bordering on straw, filled with light blue and brick-red drawing. Placed in a room the rug behaves the way good navy blue Persian rugs do, grounding the floor while the ivory border lifts the edges.

Nain Weaving and the 6La Standard

Nain sits on the edge of the central Persian desert, east of Isfahan, and its weavers turned from fine cloth to rugs in the 20th century carrying the same habits of precision with them. The La count refers to the number of plies twisted into the warp thread: fewer plies means a thinner warp, a tighter knot and a finer drawing, so 6La is the collector grade most serious Nain buyers look for. At approximately 400 knots per square inch this rug holds the crisp curved line that the design demands, and the silk outlining does the rest of the work. Our article on Nain 6La and Habibian weaving explains how the grades compare.