6'10" x 6'10" Persian Nahavand Square Rug | Rose Field with All Over Blue Medallions | Circa 2000

A true square is a rare thing in Persian weaving, because the loom and the design both have to be planned for it from the first row, and this Nahavand was. It measures 6'10" x 6'10" on the nose, hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation around 2000 in west-central Persia, with a 3/8" pile that still stands full and even edge to edge. Condition is excellent: no low spots, no repairs, tight selvages and clean original fringe at both ends. If your room is working around a square footprint, a breakfast nook, a card table, a landing or a square seating group, this is the kind of piece that solves it without compromise, and it sits comfortably beside our other square Persian rugs. Every rug we ship travels with a certificate of authenticity recording origin, materials and measurements.

Design and Motifs

Instead of one central medallion, the weaver laid out a balanced square composition: a cream-framed 8 petal rosette medallion at the dead centre, 4 slate blue diamond medallions set around it at the quarters, and half medallions pushed into the border on all 4 sides so the pattern reads as continuous. That is classic all over rug drawing, and the square format shows it off better than a long rectangle would, because the repeat mirrors in both directions from the middle. Between the medallions the field is packed with flowering vine, small 5 petal rosettes, serrated leaves and hooked palmettes, drawn small and tight so nothing in the ground goes empty. The border system runs in 3 bands: a wide main border carrying alternating 8 point star rosettes, cruciform florets and dark palmette cartouches, flanked by narrow dark guard stripes with a running trefoil vine, and finished with a red outer edge.

A Rose Red Field Framed in Slate Blue

The ground is a warm rose tone of red, somewhere between salmon and old terracotta, and it carries a soft natural variation across the width that only hand-dyed wool gives. Against it the medallions are a light to medium slate blue, cooler and dustier than a Tabriz blue, outlined in deep navy and brown so they hold their edges. The medallion centres and the corner clusters are cream, nearly ivory, which is what lifts the whole field and keeps the density of the drawing readable. Accents run through beige, cocoa brown, a deeper rose red in the floral hearts and small touches of very dark brown that read almost black at the outlines. The wide border picks up the same slate blue as the field medallions, so the frame and the interior speak to each other rather than fighting. The overall effect is warm and faded-looking without being pale, the sort of palette that sits easily with wood floors, leather and antique furniture.

Nahavand and the Hamedan Weaving Tradition

Nahavand is a town in the south of the Hamedan region of west-central Persia, high country where the sheep carry tough, long-staple fleece, and its rugs are sold within the broader Persian Hamedan rugs group. Nahavand weavers work on cotton foundations with a firm beat-down, which gives a flat, dense, hard-wearing handle rather than a floppy one, and they are known for taking workshop floral drawing from the big cities and re-cutting it in village terms: slightly squarer medallions, bolder outlines, repeats worked out by eye rather than from a full cartoon. You can see exactly that here in the way the half medallions meet the border, and in the small variations between the 4 corner clusters on the back photograph. The reverse shows clean, regular knotting with no slubs or filler, and the glossy, almost waxy surface sheen on the pile is the local wool doing what it is famous for: it polishes with use instead of going dull.