6'5" x 9'6" Persian Isfahan Rug | Sage Green Floral Field | Wool & Silk on Silk Foundation

Measuring 6'5" x 9'6", this Persian Isfahan rug is a workshop piece from the 2000s, with a wool and silk pile knotted onto a silk foundation, the construction Isfahan keeps for its better work. What makes it stand apart is the field colour: a soft sage green rather than the ivory or deep blue the town usually reaches for, which gives the whole piece a quieter, cooler presence while the rust border keeps it warm. It falls in the familiar 7x10 Persian rug footprint, so it sits under a seating group or a 6 chair table without crowding the floor. The rug is in perfect condition and ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The centre holds a lobed rust medallion built up in tiers: an ivory inner cartouche around a small green rosette, then a ring of turned palmettes and heart shaped leaf forms, finished at top and bottom with slender pendants that trail into the field. Four ivory spandrels repeat the same vocabulary at the corners, and two smaller rust cartouches punctuate the field above and below the medallion. Between them the ground is filled edge to edge with a fine all-over system of hairline vines, split arabesque leaves, lotus palmettes and small carnations, every stem drawn with the curved, unbroken line that Isfahan weavers are judged on. The main border runs a rust ground of alternating rosettes and leafy palmettes, set between ivory guard bands and a narrow dark green stripe, with a plain rust outer edge and ivory fringe closing the composition.

A Sage Green Field Framed in Terracotta

The field reads as a muted sage, close to celadon, with enough grey in it to stay calm under daylight and to warm up under lamps. Against that ground the drawing is worked in terracotta rust, brick red, amber gold, soft salmon and cream, with small hits of deep navy and bottle green in the flower centres that stop the palette from going flat. The border shifts to a deeper terracotta, almost a dusty brick, carrying pale green and ivory palmettes, and the ivory inner band gives the eye a bright line of separation between border and field. The silk in the pile picks up light along the vines and in the ivory highlights, so the surface changes tone as you walk around it, lighter from one end, deeper and redder from the other.

Isfahan Weaving and the Silk Foundation

Isfahan sits in central Persia and has been a weaving centre since the Safavid court workshops of the 16th century. Its reputation rests on drawing rather than on decoration alone: a curved vine that never breaks, spandrels that mirror each other exactly, a medallion that stays perfectly round, all of which only hold together at a high knot count. A silk foundation is what allows it. Silk warps are thinner and stronger than cotton, so the weaver can set more knots across the width and resolve the fine floral detail you see in the close-up photographs. The pile is clipped low so none of that drawing is lost, the selvedges are tight, and the back shows an even, disciplined weave with no drift in the pattern from one end to the other.