6'8" x 10'2" Persian Nain Rug | Ivory & Navy 6La Wool and Silk | Signed, Approx. 500 KPSI

This is a 2000s workshop Nain that has never spent a day on a floor. The pile stands full and even, the ivory ground is clean right out to the selvages, and the white cotton fringe is untouched at both ends. It is hand-knotted on a cotton foundation in fine wool with pure silk reserved for the flower heads, the vine tips and the medallion outlines, worked at approximately 500 knots per square inch, which is the density band that separates Persian Nain 6La and Habibian rugs from ordinary Nain production. A woven cartouche sits in the upper ivory border, the mark of a named atelier rather than an anonymous village loom, and the back shown against the ruler tells the same story: tight, regular, tiny knots. At 6'8" x 10'2" it lands in the useful 7x10 Persian rugs bracket, large enough to carry a seating group and still light enough in color to open a room up. It ships with our certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a round medallion built in concentric rings: a star rosette core, then a band of interlocking arabesque scrollwork, then a scalloped navy rim of paired cloud curls. Slim pendant palmettes rise and fall from the medallion on the long axis, marking the exact center of the rug. Around it the field runs as a true all over scheme of thin scrolling vines that split, turn back on themselves and carry Shah Abbasi palmettes, curled saz leaves and small 8 petal rosettes, drawn with the curved, flowing line that only a high knot count allows. The 4 corners are filled with deep navy quarter pieces of spiraling arabesque, which frames the field as a soft oval. An inner scalloped navy outline echoes that oval shape. The main border is set on ivory and repeats a bold arabesque cartouche and palmette chain, flanked by narrow guard stripes of alternating burgundy and blue star rosettes on a vine, and the whole layout is mirror symmetrical along both axes.

A Study in Ivory and Two Blues

The ground is a warm ivory, closer to unbleached cream than to stark white, and it carries through field, border and guard stripes so the rug reads light from across the room. The drawing sits on two separate blues: a near black navy for the vine armature, the medallion rim and the corner pieces, and a clear sky blue for flower petals and small leaves that lifts the whole palette. Between them the weaver used soft camel and taupe for the palmette bodies and a few deep burgundy rosettes as punctuation, small enough to be read as accents rather than as a third color. The silk highlights are easy to spot in person, because they catch light at a different angle than the wool and make the flower heads glint as you walk past. Photographed straight down the ivory looks cooler, and from an angle it warms up, which is normal light play in a fine wool and silk pile.

Nain: The Town and the Weave

Nain sits in central Persia, east of Isfahan on the edge of the Dasht-e Kavir, and for centuries it was known for fine woolen cloth rather than rugs. When that trade thinned in the 20th century its craftsmen turned their hands to the loom, borrowing the Isfahan approach to drawing and then refining it into their own ivory and blue signature. Quality in Persian Nain rugs is described by the La count, which is the number of plies twisted into the yarn: the lower the number, the thinner the thread and the tighter the knotting, so 6La work sits well above standard 9La production. That is what you are looking at here, a roughly 500 knot per square inch weave with silk inlay, a signed border cartouche and a design executed without a single hurried line. Nain of this grade is bought as much for the drawing as for the floor it will cover.