6'7" x 10' Persian Nain Rug | Navy Field with Ivory Medallion | Wool and Silk, Brand New

Nain weavers work small, slow and precise, and this 6'7" x 10' rug shows exactly what that buys: an indigo field covered in hundreds of individually drawn flowers, an ivory star medallion holding the center, and silk outlining that catches the light along every curved stem. It is brand new and has never been on a floor, so the pile stands full and even from end to end and the white cotton fringe is untouched. Among Persian Nain rugs this is the classic town formula rather than a loose interpretation of it, and it ships with a certificate of authenticity recording origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

At the center sits a pointed ivory star medallion, roughly 16 lobes deep, filled with heart-shaped leaves and a small sky blue rosette at its core. It floats on a field of thin scrolling vines that carry Shah Abbasi palmettes, carnations, tulip buds and tiny 8 petal rosettes, all drawn symmetrically around the long axis, with a small pendant palmette anchoring each end of the medallion. The 4 corners are filled with large ivory spandrels of split-leaf arabesque, and those spandrels are wide enough to read as a second layer of design rather than simple corner fillers. The main border runs on an ivory ground with linked lobed cartouches, each holding a single frontal palmette, and is flanked by narrow guard stripes of pale blue rosettes set between paired brackets, then finished with a fine twisted rope outline. Look at where the border turns: the cartouches resolve cleanly at every corner, which only happens when the cartoon and the weaver are both good.

Indigo, Ivory and the Silk Sheen Between Them

The field is a deep saturated navy, close to true indigo, dark enough that it reads almost black in low light and opens into blue under a lamp or daylight. Against it the drawing is carried mostly in ivory and a warm oatmeal cream, with a second range of cool sky blue and pale celadon inside the petals, and soft camel and light olive shading on the larger palmettes so no single flower looks flat. Small oxblood and burgundy dots appear at flower centers, a few knots at a time, and they do more work than their size suggests by keeping the cool palette from going cold. The silk is used as outlining and highlight rather than as whole motifs, so the rug shifts as you walk around it: the vine tracery in the border and the leaves in the medallion lift and gleam while the wool ground stays matte. Border and field are the reverse of each other, ivory on navy inside, navy and blue on ivory outside, which is what makes the whole thing look framed rather than busy.

Nain: the Town and the Weave

Nain sits in central Persia on the western edge of the Dasht-e Kavir desert, a few hours east of Isfahan, and for centuries it was known not for rugs but for fine woven woolen cloth. When that trade fell away in the 1930s the town's workshops turned to knotting, and they brought the same standards with them, which is why Nain drawing looks like refined Isfahan drawing: curved line, flowing vine, tight floral scale. The pieces are built on a cotton foundation with a wool pile and silk used to outline motifs, clipped low so the pattern stays legible at floor level. Fineness in Nain is graded by the number of threads twisted into each warp bundle, and even without a stated grade you can judge this rug the way a dealer does: run a hand across the back, feel how small and regular the knots are, then look at how cleanly the vines cross without smudging. At 6'7" x 10' it is a true room rug, formal in feel but calm in effect, and the never-used pile means the next owner gets the full life of it.