6'5" x 8' Persian Nain Rug | Ivory Wool & Silk Star Medallion | 9La, Never Used

Pick this one up and the first thing you notice is the weight of the wool against how thin the pile is clipped, which is exactly how Persian Nain rugs are supposed to feel. It is woven on a cotton foundation in wool with silk used to outline the drawing, so the vines and flower stems catch light at a different angle than the field around them. At 6'5" x 8' it is a true small-room size, a piece that fills a sitting area or a bedroom without being cut off by furniture. Woven in the 2000's and never put on a floor, the pile stands full height from edge to edge. It ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a layered star medallion: a small rosette core, a ring of narrow lanceolate petals, then an outer collar of 16 blue lobes drawn as pointed cusps, each filled with a tiny paired blossom. Above and below it a pendant palmette hangs on a straight stem, the only strictly vertical line in a field otherwise built entirely from curves. That field is an all-over vine scroll, thin stems branching into Shah Abbasi palmettes, open lotus heads, clustered small blossoms and long curling serrated leaves that double back on themselves. The drawing is mirrored across both axes, so the four corners repeat the same leaf and palmette cluster. Five bands frame it: a wide main border of meandering vine and alternating palmettes, two narrow floral guard stripes on each side, and an outer camel band carrying a row of stylized blue leaf and bud forms that reads as the rug's quietest detail until you look at the corner close-up.

A Study in Ivory and Blue

The ground is a warm ivory, closer to unbleached cream than white, and it carries roughly three quarters of the surface, which is what keeps a rug this densely drawn from feeling busy. Against it the medallion lobes are a clear mid cornflower blue, lifted by pale sky blue inside the petals and pulled down by near-black navy in the outlines and leaf tips. The vine work runs in taupe, camel and a dark walnut brown, with soft sage green on a few leaf blades and small deep burgundy centers dotted through the blossoms as the single warm note. Borders stay in the same family, ivory grounds with navy and blue drawing, separated by narrow camel stripes, so the eye reads one continuous palette rather than a frame bolted onto a field. If you are furnishing around cool neutrals or pale oak flooring, this sits in the same register as the best ivory Persian rugs without going flat.

Nain, Central Persia, and the La System

Nain sits on the desert edge east of Isfahan, and its weavers came to rugs late, in the 1930s, after the town's fine wool cloth trade declined. They brought the cloth maker's eye with them, which is why Nain quality is measured by the La: the number of strands twisted into each knot yarn. Fewer strands mean a thinner yarn, a tighter knot and finer drawing, so 9La is the solid workshop grade while Nain 6La and Habibian rugs sit at the collector ceiling. This piece is a 9La, and the back photograph shows what that buys you: even rows, a straight selvage, clean color breaks at every outline, and silk sitting exactly where the pattern calls for it. The curved line never wobbles, which is the real test of a Nain and the reason the town's name travels as far as it does.