6'1" x 9'5" Kashmir Rug | Kashan Medallion Design | Bamboo Silk, Excellent Condition

This 6'1" x 9'5" Kashmir rug is hand-knotted in bamboo silk on a cotton foundation, and it is drawn to the old city-workshop formula: a deep burgundy field, a radiating navy and turquoise medallion at dead center, ivory spandrels in the 4 corners, and a wide navy border of palmettes and scrolling vine. The pile is cut low and even, which is what lets the bamboo silk do its work, shifting from dark wine to a bright polished red as you walk around it. It is a recent weave in excellent, essentially perfect condition, never used, with full pile, straight sides and clean ivory fringe at both ends. At just over 6 feet by 9 and a half, it sits squarely in the most useful room size there is, so it is worth comparing against the rest of our 6x9 rugs before you decide. Like every hand-knotted Oriental rug we sell, it ships with a certificate of authenticity listing its size, materials, origin and construction.

Design and Motifs

The layout is the classic Kashan design: one large lobed medallion, a floral all-over field that never stops moving, and corner spandrels that repeat the medallion drawing in reverse. The medallion core is an ivory rosette ringed in green, set into an inky navy ground that throws out turquoise and sea green leaf forms in every direction, each one outlined in ivory so the shape stays crisp at a distance. Slender navy pendants point up and down from the medallion tips. Around it the burgundy field carries curling vine, lanceolate leaves, rosettes and small palmettes, with 2 navy cartouche-shaped ornaments set on the long axis. The main border is navy, filled with an alternating rhythm of ivory palmettes and rose-pink blossoms joined by a thin red meander line, and it is framed by 5 narrow guard stripes in ivory, pale green and turquoise. The corners resolve cleanly, which is the first thing to check on any medallion rug and the surest sign the design was mapped out properly before the first knot went in.

A Burgundy, Navy and Turquoise Palette

The field is a true burgundy, closer to wine and brick than to orange-red, and it holds its depth even under bright light. Against it the strongest accent is turquoise, used heavily in the medallion leaves and scattered through the field as small blossoms, with a cooler sea green and a deep bottle green backing it up. Navy does the structural work: the medallion core, the 2 field ornaments and the broad main border are all the same near-black blue, which is what gives the rug its weight and stops the reds from going sweet. Ivory runs through the spandrels, the guard stripes and the outlines of nearly every flower, and there are quieter notes of soft rose pink, pale gold and a warm cream that reads almost butter-colored in the corner detail. The bamboo silk pile takes dye with a high sheen, so each of these colors has 2 faces, deeper with the nap and noticeably brighter against it.

Woven in Kashmir, Northern India

Kashmir, in the far north of India, has been the country's fine-weaving center for generations, and it is the workshops there that took on the curvilinear city designs and the very high knot counts those designs demand. India is where most of the world's good contemporary hand-knotted work is now made, and this piece shows why: the drawing is tight, the outlines are single-knot clean, the two ends measure the same, and the back reads as an even, closely packed grid with no crowding at the borders. Bamboo silk is the fiber Kashmir weavers reach for when they want the luster of silk at a size a household can actually use, and on a low, dense pile like this one it gives a smooth, cool hand and a reflective surface that a wool rug simply cannot produce. The back tag on this piece is marked B-74474, 6.1 x 9.5.