5' x 8' Persian Nain Rug | Emerald Green Field, Wool & Silk Pile | Star Medallion, 2000s

A green field is the uncommon choice in Nain weaving, and it is what makes this 5' x 8' piece worth stopping on. The colour reads deep and slightly sea-toned in daylight, and the ivory drawing that covers it stays crisp because the outlines are worked in silk against a wool ground. The rug dates to the 2000's, has never been put on a floor, and the pile still stands full and even from selvedge to selvedge. A small woven cartouche sits in the guard border at one end, the mark of a workshop piece rather than an anonymous commercial weave. Persian Nain rugs of this quality hold their look for decades, and every rug ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The centre carries a round 8 point star medallion built in layers: a pale ivory core with a small rosette at its heart, a ring of blue and black lancet leaves, then a band of brown and burgundy cartouches finished with scrolling ram's horn tips. Ivory pendants run above and below it along the long axis. Around the medallion the field is filled edge to edge with a classic Nain arabesque, a lattice of thin ivory vines carrying palmettes, split leaves and small 5 petal blossoms, the whole thing mirrored across both axes so the drawing reads the same from either end. The 4 corner spandrels drop out of the field in ivory and repeat the medallion vocabulary at quarter scale. A wide ivory main border holds an alternating run of rosettes and cupped palmettes tied together by a black vine line, framed on both sides by pale blue guard stripes and a fine barber-pole outer stripe. Plain ivory cotton fringe finishes both ends.

A Green Field With Ivory, Blue and Brown

The ground is a saturated emerald that leans towards sea green under warm light and deepens almost to pine in the shadow of the pile, an unusual and quietly confident choice among green Persian rugs. Against it, the vine work is drawn in a warm ivory that shifts to cream where the silk catches light, which is what gives the field its low sheen when you walk around the rug. The blues do the real work: a soft powder blue in the small blossoms and guard stripes, a stronger cobalt in the flower centres, and near-black indigo used sparingly for outlines so the pattern holds its shape from across a room. Warm brown and a dark burgundy appear in the medallion ring, the corner leaves and the border rosettes, with occasional tiny touches of sage green in the border flowers. The ivory border is noticeably lighter than the field, so the rug frames itself rather than blending into a pale floor.

Nain: The Town and the Weave

Nain sits on the edge of the central desert in Persia, east of Isfahan, and its weaving tradition is younger than most: the town turned from fine wool cloth to rug making in the 20th century and brought the tailor's precision with it. That history explains the look. Nain weavers work on a cotton foundation with a short, tightly clipped wool pile and outline the pattern in silk, which is why the drawing here stays hairline thin over a 5 by 8 field instead of thickening at the curves. The back, visible in the folded corner, shows small regular knots and straight, even rows, the sign of a workshop loom with a proper cartoon rather than village improvisation. The shearing is low and consistent, the selvedges are tight and the rug lies flat without a wave. For a buyer, that combination means a rug that looks formal but wears well, holds a clean line for generations and reads as a serious piece in a study, bedroom or sitting area without dominating it.