6'7" x 9'10" Persian Kashan Rug | Red Field, Navy Lobed Medallion | Fine Wool Pile, Excellent Condition

This is the Kashan formula as it should be drawn: a clear red field, a navy lobed medallion with an ivory heart, and navy spandrels closing the 4 corners. The rug measures 6'7" x 9'10" and is hand-knotted entirely by hand in wool on a cotton foundation, with a pile that is low, even and tight enough to hold the small flowerheads crisply, as the close-up photographs show. It is a town weave rather than a village piece, so the curves stay true, the medallion sits properly on center, and the two pendants line up with the long axis. Condition is excellent, with full pile and sound selvedges and fringe. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity recording origin, materials and measurements.

Design and Motifs

A navy medallion with 8 lobes anchors the center, and inside it an ivory cartouche frames a light blue 8 petal rosette, the single brightest point in the whole rug. Slim navy pendants rise and fall from the medallion toward each end, and a broad navy cloud-band outline sweeps around the inner field so the red reads as a lit panel rather than a flat ground. Across that red the weaver filled every inch with an all-over scrolling vine: small ivory and blue rosettes, split palmettes, buds on thin stems and the long curled serrated leaves that give Kashan drawing its movement. The 4 spandrels are ivory and navy, each packed with its own vinework. The main border is navy, carrying an alternating run of palmettes and lotus heads joined by a thin ivory meander, and it is held between 2 ivory guard stripes of repeating flowerheads plus a narrow inner stripe of small hearts and rosettes. Nothing in the layout is improvised; it is a cartoon-drawn classical design executed cleanly from end to end.

The Color Palette, Red Against Navy

The field is a true warm red, closer to cherry than to brick, and because the wool is lustrous it shifts between a deeper tone and a brighter flash depending on which way you walk around it. Against that, the border and medallion are a dark inky navy that reads nearly indigo in the angled photographs, and that contrast is what makes the design legible from across a room. The drawing itself is carried in soft ivory and cream, with a cooler sky blue used for the medallion rosette and for scattered flowerheads in the field and border. Smaller touches do the rest of the work: a muted gold on leaf tips and tiny stems, dusty rose and salmon in the smaller blossoms, a few points of deep green, and the occasional black outline that keeps shapes from blurring into one another. There is no pastel wash and no overdye here, just saturated classical Persian color on a red ground that will sit comfortably with wood floors, brass, and both dark and cream upholstery.

Kashan, the Weaving Town and the Weave

Kashan sits in central Persia, north of Isfahan, and its looms trace straight back to the Safavid court workshops of the 16th century. The town is known for soft, lustrous local wool and for the formula collectors recognize instantly: red field, navy lobed medallion, ivory spandrels. It is also the single most recognizable Persian design in American interiors, and if you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. Persian Kashan rugs are woven on a cotton warp and weft with a single wefted, finely beaten weave, which is why the back stays flat and the pattern holds its curves at this scale. The ruler photograph shows that density clearly: the knot rows are tight and regular, which is what allows motifs this small to be drawn without going soft. At 6'7" x 9'10" it belongs to the most useful group of all, the 7x10 Persian rugs, large enough to carry a seating group and still take a lifetime of ordinary use.