7'10" x 17'2" Persian Kashan Rug | Ivory All-Over Floral Gallery Size | Signed Cartouche

A rug that runs more than 17 feet long and stays under 8 feet wide is a deliberate commission, not a stock size, and this one was drawn for a long formal room. The ivory field carries an all-over floral scheme with no central medallion, so the pattern reads continuously from one end of the gallery to the other instead of asking the furniture to sit around a single point. A woven cartouche sits in the end border, which tells you a named workshop signed the piece rather than a village loom turning out anonymous goods. Among Persian Kashan rugs this length is genuinely scarce, and buyers shopping oversize Persian rugs rarely find a signed city weave in a true gallery proportion. Every rug we ship leaves with a certificate of authenticity recording origin, materials and measurements.

Design and Motifs

The field is built on a lattice of thin scrolling vines that cross and recross, each junction anchored by a palmette, a lotus head or an open rosette. Curled serrated leaves, the long sickle shapes Kashan drawers use to fill negative space, sweep between the flower heads and keep the ivory ground from ever looking empty. The drawing mirrors along the length rather than repeating mechanically, so the eye picks up rhythm without catching a copy-and-paste block. A single main border of large palmettes and paired leaves runs the full perimeter, flanked by narrow guard stripes of reciprocal vine and small blossoms. In the fourth photograph the border opens into a rectangular cartouche filled with woven Persian script, placed just inside the fringe, the traditional spot for a workshop mark. The corners resolve cleanly, with the border pattern turning the angle without breaking, which is one of the fastest ways to judge whether a cartoon was properly drafted.

The Ivory Field and Its Sage Green Frame

The ground is a warm ivory that leans toward soft cream and picks up a faint gold cast under lamplight, the shade Kashan weavers get from undyed and lightly dyed local wool rather than from bleach. Against it the main border shifts to a muted sage green, unusual in Kashan work where red and navy dominate, and that green does most of the work of framing the rug. Inside the drawing the palette is cool and restrained: powder and periwinkle blues in the leaves and vine tips, deep navy outlining the palmettes and running through the guard stripes, with rust, terracotta and copper reserved for the flower centers so the warm notes appear as small punctuation instead of broad blocks. Ivory reappears in the inner guard borders, which brightens the transition from field to border. The overall effect is pale and formal rather than saturated, which is why the rug sits comfortably in rooms with light oak or parquet floors, as the photographs show.

Kashan Weaving and Workshop Quality

Kashan sits in central Persia north of Isfahan and has been a weaving city since the Safavid court workshops, which is why its rugs are drawn in curved line rather than the angular village idiom. The local wool is soft and lustrous, and the city standard of a cotton foundation with a tight, even wool pile is what allows drawing this fine to hold its shape across a 17 foot warp. The reverse, shown with a ruler in the last photograph, is regular and closely packed, with no slack rows or width variation along the length, which for a loom this long is the real test of the weavers. When you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor, which tells you how firmly this design language sits in the American idea of a serious rug. A signed cartouche puts this piece in the workshop tier rather than the commercial one, and the 3/8" pile is full and unworn end to end.