4'7" x 6'9" Persian Qazvin Rug | Ivory Field Floral Medallion | 1970s Excellent Condition

This 4'7" x 6'9" Qazvin was hand-knotted in northwest Persia in the 1970s, and it is the kind of rug that quietly does everything right: an ivory field that keeps the room light, a single navy medallion that gives the floor a center, and a wide sapphire border drawn with real confidence. The pile is fine wool on a cotton foundation, still full and even after five decades, with clean white cotton fringe at both ends and tight red selvages down the sides. At just under 5x7 it works as a sitting area rug, a bedside rug or a centerpiece in a smaller formal room, and among 5x7 Persian rugs a piece with this much drawing packed into the field is not common. Every rug we ship carries a certificate of authenticity documenting origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The layout is classic urban Persian: a lobed navy medallion at the exact center, ringed by a serrated crown of petals and finished top and bottom with small pendant finials. Inside the medallion sits an 8 petal rosette surrounded by open roses and small five point blossoms, all drawn in curved line rather than the angular village shorthand. The ivory field around it is not left empty. It carries free floating bouquets, single rose sprays, curling leaf tendrils and two smaller lozenge cartouches set on the long axis above and below the medallion, arranged so the field reads as a scattered garden instead of a repeating grid. Deep scalloped spandrels in blue close off all 4 corners, filled with palmettes, split leaf arabesques and rust colored scrollwork. The main border repeats a rhythm of large blossoms and turned palmettes on a navy ground, and it is flanked by a stack of narrow guard stripes in ivory, rose and red that frame the whole composition without crowding it.

A Study in Ivory, Sapphire and Crimson

The ground is a soft ivory that leans just slightly warm, closer to unbleached cream than to stark white, which is why the rug never looks cold under lamp light. Against it the weaver ran two distinct blues: a bright mid sapphire for the spandrels and the outer field frame, and a much darker indigo navy for the medallion core and the main border, so the two blues read as separate layers rather than one flat mass. Red appears in three registers, a clear tomato red in the selvage and thin guard lines, a deeper brick red in the scrolling arabesques, and a wine burgundy tucked into the smaller blossoms. Rose pink and salmon carry the open flower heads, and cool sage to bottle green fills the leaves and stems, giving the bouquets their depth. Small touches of gold and camel outline the palmettes around the medallion, and fine black outlining separates every element so the pattern stays crisp from across the room.

Qazvin: City Weaving in Northwest Persia

Qazvin sits on the plain northwest of Tehran, a city that served as the Safavid capital in the 16th century before the court moved south, and that history shows in how its rugs are drawn. This is town work, not tribal work: a paper cartoon, a curvilinear design, a symmetrical medallion and a border that turns each corner correctly instead of being cut off where the weaver ran out of room. Look at the corners in the photographs and you will see the border resolving cleanly at all 4 turns, which is a workshop discipline rather than a village habit. The weave is tight and level, the pile clipped low so the fine wool holds the detail of the small blossoms, and the back shows a regular, close knot line with no slack or drawn-in areas. Wool from this region takes dye well and wears hard, and a 1970s example kept in this condition, with full pile and original ends and edges, is a rug you can put on the floor now and still hand down later.