6'6" x 9'2" Persian Kashan Rug | Red Floral Medallion Field | Semi-Antique, Excellent Condition

Pick this one up and the weight tells you immediately that it was woven for a lifetime of use. It is a classic Persian Kashan rug, hand-knotted in lustrous wool on a cotton foundation, with a red field, a navy lobed medallion and drawing fine enough that every small palmette and leaf tip stays legible. At 6'6" x 9'2" it sits comfortably in the 6x9 class, the most useful traditional room size there is, and it belongs with the 6x9 Persian rugs a buyer looks at when a sofa and two chairs need to land on wool rather than on bare floor. The pile is even edge to edge, the ends and sides are original and intact, and the condition is excellent. Every rug we ship travels with its certificate of authenticity, naming the origin, the materials and the hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The layout is the textbook Kashan arrangement, drawn with real confidence. A navy lobed medallion holds the center, stepped inward through an ivory and sage cartouche to a small 8 petal rosette at the very middle. The red field around it is not left open: it is filled with curling arabesque vines, serrated saz leaves, split palmettes and rosettes that turn and answer each other across the axis, and the 4 corners carry navy spandrels drawn with the same vocabulary so the field reads as one continuous garden interrupted by the medallion. The main border is navy, set with an alternating procession of palmettes and flowering vine, and it is flanked on both sides by light blue guard stripes carrying a meandering blossom scroll and a reciprocal sawtooth minor stripe. The outer edge finishes in plain red selvage, which frames the whole piece and keeps the busy borders from running into the room.

A Deep Red Field Shaded with Navy, Teal and Ivory

The ground is a deep madder red that leans slightly cool, closer to crimson than to brick, and it carries the gentle tonal movement that good wool and natural dyeing give over decades. Against it the navy of the medallion, the spandrels and the main border reads almost black in low light and resolves to indigo under a lamp. The relief colors are what make this piece sing: a clear teal and a paler sky blue in the blossoms and guard stripes, ivory and cream in the outlining and in the medallion center, a soft sage to olive green in the leaves, and a warm salmon to peach that appears in the border palmettes and in scattered flowers across the field. The sum is a rug that anchors a red and navy scheme without shouting, and it sits naturally with other red and burgundy Persian rugs as well as with warm wood, brass and leather.

Kashan: Central Persia and the Court Workshop Tradition

Kashan lies in central Persia, north of Isfahan, and its weaving goes back to the Safavid court workshops, which is why the town never adopted the angular village style and instead kept the curved line, the medallion and spandrel plan and the flowing vine. Two things made it famous: soft lustrous local wool that takes dye deeply and polishes with use, and a tight, dense weave on a cotton foundation that holds the fine floral drawing in place. You have seen the look even if you did not know the name, because when you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. On this 6'6" x 9'2" example the knotting is fine and regular, the back shows a clean even grid with no slack rows, and the pile still has body throughout, which is what separates a workshop Kashan from the commercial work that copies its pattern.