6'9" x 11' Persian Nain Rug | Tree of Life with Birds and Animals | Fine Wool and Silk

Most Nains repeat the same shah abbasi medallion, which is exactly why this one stops people. The field is a living garden: paired deer, leaping hares, pheasants and songbirds set among willows, cypress and blossoming fruit trees, drawn across an ivory ground with silk used to outline the finest details. Woven in the 2000's on a cotton foundation with a wool and silk pile, it measures 6'9" x 11' and is in perfect condition, with full even pile and clean original fringes. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity, and this Persian Nain rug is a genuine hand-knotted piece from the central Persian weaving town whose name it carries.

Design and Motifs

There is no medallion here at all. The whole 6'9" x 11' field is a tree of life garden, mirrored down the center axis so that each animal has its twin on the opposite side: 2 grazing deer with lowered heads, hares mid-leap, small birds perched on branches and a pair of confronting pheasants above a flowering shrub. Between them the weaver drew willows with weeping branches, tall cypress, flowering fruit trees and low clusters of iris and carnation, each plant outlined in a darker shade so the drawing reads clearly from standing height. The main border is a camel-ground procession of small trees, blossoming stems and 4 petal florals, flanked by narrow guard stripes of blue meander. Look at the corners in the detail photograph and you can see the drawing turn cleanly without cutting a motif in half, which is the mark of a properly resolved cartoon rather than a copied one.

A Quiet Ivory Palette with Olive, Blue and Brown

The ground is a warm undyed ivory that carries a faint cream cast in daylight, and it does the heavy lifting: everything else is drawn on top of it in low-saturation tones. Tree trunks and animal bodies are chestnut and walnut brown, the foliage runs from olive green to a dusty sage, and the water lines and smaller leaves are a soft powder blue with navy used only for outlining. Scattered blossoms bring in muted burgundy and a touch of terracotta, just enough to keep the field from going flat. The main border shifts to a camel beige that frames the ivory without competing with it. Where silk is used in the pile it shows as a brighter streak along stems and bird wings, catching light from one direction and going matte from the other. It is a palette that sits comfortably with oak floors, linen upholstery and warm white walls.

Nain: Desert Town, Isfahan Drawing

Nain sits on the western edge of the central Persian desert, a few hours from Isfahan, and it is a young weaving center by Persian standards. The town made fine wool cloth for centuries, and when that trade fell away the workshops turned their spinners and their eye for fine yarn toward rugs, taking the curvilinear Isfahan drawing style as their model. That inheritance is visible in this piece: the flowing vine, the tight small-scale animals and the confident curve of every branch. Nain weavers work on a cotton foundation with a soft wool pile and silk reserved for outlining, which is precisely what you see in the field and in the close weave along the selvage. A pictorial garden of this complexity in a 6'9" x 11' room size is far less common than the standard medallion Nain, and it rewards a buyer who wants a rug to be looked at as well as walked on.