6' x 10' Persian Qum Silk Rug | Ivory Medallion on Red Field | Signed Cartouche

This is a pure silk rug, pile and foundation both, and it has never spent a day on a floor. At one end, just inside the red end panel, a small cartouche carries the weaver's name in Persian script: it reads "Iran Qum Mousavi", which tells you this came out of a named atelier rather than off a commercial loom. The 1/4" silk pile is clipped low so the drawing stays sharp, and the rug reads as two different pieces depending on where you stand, as the third photo shows next to the first. At 6' x 10' it is a true room rug that still behaves like a collector's piece, and it ships with our certificate of authenticity. If pure silk is new territory for you, our guide to Persian silk rugs explains what to look for and how to live with one.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a large round medallion built as a starburst, with an ivory ground inside it, a small red rosette at the dead center, and rings of tiny blossoms and blue leafwork radiating out to a scalloped edge. Around it the field is a dense curvilinear lattice of scrolling vines, split palmettes and small flowering vases, each vase drawn upright and repeated in a mirrored rhythm across the red ground so the eye keeps finding pairs. The 4 corner spandrels are worked in soft green and gold with their own vine scrolls, which pulls the medallion visually into a diamond. Framing all of it is a wide navy main border of linked palmette cartouches and open roses, set off by ivory guard stripes carrying a thin meandering vine. The fifth photo shows how many narrow stripes sit between field and main border, each one drawn cleanly rather than blurred, which is the tell of a low clipped silk pile and a fine weave.

The Ivory, Red and Green Palette

The field is a deep wine red, closer to claret than to tomato, and because it is silk it swings from dark burgundy to a bright warm cherry as you walk around it. The medallion and spandrels are ivory and a muted sage green shot with gold, and that green is what keeps the rug from reading as a plain red and cream formula. Inside the drawing there are small hits of coral, salmon pink, sky blue, olive and pale butter yellow, most of them in the roses and leaf tips visible in the close-up photographs. The main border is a dark indigo navy, which anchors the whole thing and makes the ivory guard stripes look brighter than they are. Note that photo 3 was taken with the light running with the pile, which lifts the reds toward rust and washes the field paler, while photo 2 shows the deeper, truer saturation.

Qum: Silk Weaving in Central Persia

Qum sits in central Persia, south of Tehran, and it is a young weaving city by Persian standards, with production really beginning in the 20th century. What it lacked in age it made up for in ambition: the workshops there chose to work almost exclusively in the finest silk, and the competition between neighboring ateliers pushed knot counts and drawing standards up fast. That rivalry is why a signed Qum matters, because the name in the cartouche is the workshop staking its reputation on the piece. You can read more in our complete guide to Qum rugs. On this example the back and the selvage in the last photograph show tight, even knotting and a straight, hand-finished red edge, and the ivory silk fringe is still full and untrimmed by wear, which is consistent with a rug that was woven, rolled and stored rather than used.