5' x 7'10" Persian Isfahan Rug | Ivory Wool & Silk on Silk | 500 KPSI | Signed, Never Used

This 5' x 7'10" piece is a workshop-grade example of the town that made fine drawing its business. It is hand-knotted at roughly 500 knots per square inch in wool and silk on a silk foundation, which is why the ivory ground reads as smooth as paper and the vine lines stay thin and unbroken across the whole field. The weaver signed it in a cartouche at one end, and the rug has never been on a floor: the pile stands full, the fringes are untrimmed and the colors are exactly as they came off the loom. Among Isfahan rugs this is the size that gets used most, small enough for a study or a bedroom and fine enough to sit under a glass table without disappearing. Every rug ships with a certificate of authenticity documenting origin, materials and knot count.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a radiating star medallion built from light blue petal compartments ringed in gold outline, with a small red rosette at the exact core and 8 pink roses set around the outer ring. Above and below it sit 2 dark lattice-filled cartouches framed in red, anchoring the vertical axis. The rest of the ivory field is an all over arabesque: thin navy vine scrolls curling into brown rosettes, blue and red palmettes, split leaves and tulip heads, all mirrored left to right and top to bottom. Each of the 4 corners carries a spandrel drawn in soft gray-green with its own miniature vine work. The wide tan main border is the showpiece, alternating ivory cartouches packed with red and rose cabbage roses against blue and gold arabesque panels, and it is edged by narrow guard stripes of pale arrowhead motifs and small white blossoms on red.

A Detailed Look at the Colors

Ivory is the governing color, a warm undyed cream that carries most of the field and lets everything drawn on it read clearly. Against it the palette is deliberately cool in the center and warm at the edges: the medallion works through pale sky blue, mid blue and deep navy, while the surrounding blossoms move from rose pink through clear red to a near-black crimson in the smallest lattice motifs. Brown and tan rosettes give the field its earth tone and keep the pinks from looking sweet, and small strokes of green appear in the leaves and in the border bouquets. The main border shifts to beige and tan with gold and mustard highlights, which frames the ivory interior instead of competing with it. Because silk is used in the highlights, the light blues and pinks shift in brightness as you walk around the rug, catching light in the medallion one moment and in the border roses the next.

Isfahan Origin and Weaving Quality

Isfahan sits in central Persia and has been a court weaving center since the Safavid workshops of the 16th century. Its reputation was never built on thick pile or bold color but on drawing, the curved line, the flowing vine and the precision of a repeat, and drawing of that kind only works at a high knot count. Approximately 500 knots per square inch is what allows a rose petal here to be shaded across 4 tones rather than blocked in one. The silk foundation is the second half of the equation: silk warps are thinner and stronger than cotton, so the weaver can pack more knots into the same width and the finished rug lies flat and handles like heavy cloth. The back, visible in the photographs, shows the grain of that weave clearly, tight and even from selvedge to selvedge, with the signature cartouche resolved in the border at the same fineness as the field.