7'4" x 10'4" Persian Isfahan Rug | Wool and Silk Floral Medallion | Approx. 500 KPSI, 1980's

An estate piece from the 1980's, this Persian Isfahan rug measures 7'4" x 10'4" and is knotted at roughly 500 knots per square inch in fine wool with silk drawn through the highlights. The pile is short and tight, the drawing is city work rather than village work, and the silk catches light along the vine tips and the inner petals of the medallion. It is a room-size piece with workshop-level detail, priced as a good-condition estate rug rather than a mint one, and it ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The layout is the classic Isfahan formula, drawn with a compass-tight hand. At center sits a round lobed medallion built on an 8 petal rosette, each lobe filled with its own small palmette and cloud band, ringed by a scalloped ivory surround. Above and below the medallion hang small pendant cartouches, and the field between them runs with a continuous arabesque of thin vines, lanceolate leaves, lotus heads and clustered blossoms that mirror perfectly across both axes. The 4 corners carry large spandrels in ivory and rose that step into the field with jagged, almost lace-cut outlines. The main border is a red ground scrolling with alternating palmettes and rosettes, framed by two flanking guard bands of beige floral meander and finished with narrow outer stripes, so the eye is led inward without a single break in the repeat.

A Deep Blue Field Against Red and Rose

Blue is the main color, a saturated royal blue that deepens toward navy in the shaded corners and lifts to a brighter cobalt across the open center of the field. The border is a true deep red, warm rather than orange, with small navy reserves inside the palmettes. Between the two sit the softer tones that make the rug feel older than its age: powder beige, chalk ivory, blush pink and a dusty rose in the spandrels and in the medallion petals, with pale sky blue used inside the innermost rosette. Black outlines the leaves and flower centers and gives the drawing its definition, while touches of olive, mustard and tomato red appear in single knots throughout the vinework. The fringe and selvage are natural ivory cotton.

Isfahan Origin and Weaving Quality

Isfahan sits in central Persia and has been a weaving city since the Safavid court workshops of the 16th century. Its reputation rests entirely on drawing: the curved line, the unbroken vine, the ability to turn a petal without a stair-step, and none of that is possible without a high knot count on a fine cotton foundation. At approximately 500 knots per square inch this piece is firmly in workshop territory, which is why the medallion rosette holds a clean circle and the border repeat stays true around all 4 corners. Silk is used sparingly and deliberately, in the highlights where the light will hit it, which is the Isfahan habit rather than an all-over silk effect. Among 7x10 Persian rugs, a signed-quality city weave at this fineness is the kind of piece collectors keep rather than replace.