6'11" x 12'6" Persian Isfahan Rug | Ivory All Over Floral Vine Field | Circa 1970s

This is an estate piece from the 1970s, hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation and drawn in the floral vocabulary of Persian Isfahan rugs. At 6'11" x 12'6" it is a long room rug rather than a standard 9x12, which suits a rectangular living room, a long dining table or a wide upstairs hall better than a squarer piece would. What sets it apart immediately is that the field has no wide multi-band border: the vinework simply runs to a narrow reddish edge finish on all 4 sides, so the ivory ground reads as one continuous garden from fringe to fringe. The pile is low and even after decades of careful ownership, the handle is supple, and the drawing is still crisp enough to follow every stem. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity stating origin, materials and construction.

Design and Motifs

The layout is a true all over floral design, built on broad navy vine scrolls that sweep in long ovals down the length of the field and mirror each other across the center axis. Where the vines cross, the weaver set large lobed palmettes and serrated Shah Abbas blossoms, some facing up, some turned sideways, so the repeat never looks mechanical. Between them sit smaller 8 petal rosettes, split leaves, curling saz leaves with pale centers, and tiny buds on hair-thin stems that fill the ivory ground without crowding it. The 4 corners carry the same vine turning back on itself, which is how you can tell the borderless treatment was planned rather than trimmed. The curved line work is the tell of a town workshop: the stems bend cleanly, the palmette outlines stay smooth, and the drawing holds its proportion across nearly 12 and a half feet of length.

Ivory, Blue and Rose Reading of the Color

The ground is a warm ivory, closer to unbleached cream than white, with the faint natural variation in the wool that gives an older rug its glow. Over it the vines run in 2 blues: a deep indigo navy for the main scrolls and outlines, and a lighter mid blue that fills palmette bodies and lifts them off the field. The reds range from a soft rose to a clear brick red in the large blossoms, with a few dark oxblood accents at the palmette tips. Green appears as sage and teal inside leaves and flower centers rather than as a field color, and there are small touches of caramel brown, soft gold, pale pink and black outlining that sharpen the detail. The narrow edge finish is a dark red, which frames all that ivory quietly. The overall effect is light and cool from a standing height, then far richer in color the moment you crouch down to it.

Isfahan Weaving in Central Persia

Isfahan sits in central Persia and has been a weaving city since the Safavid court workshops of the 16th century, when the shah's own designers set the standard for the curved line, the flowing vine and the balanced floral field. That reputation rests on drawing rather than on color alone, and good drawing only survives at a high knot count, which is why Isfahan work is graded first on precision. This piece belongs to that tradition: a wool pile on cotton warps, worked at a density fine enough to carry hair-thin stems and small buds cleanly, with the low even clip that lets the pattern read as though it were painted. It comes out of an estate rather than a showroom, which is exactly how rugs of this generation reach the market, and it has the settled colors and supple handle that only 50 years of use can give a rug.