7'9" x 11'3" Persian Lavar Kerman Rug | Antique Floral Medallion | Soft Green Field with Indigo Borders

This is an antique room size piece that has spent a long life on a floor and come through it with its drawing intact and its color turned into something no new rug can imitate. The wool pile has worn down to a thin, even nap across much of the field, which is exactly what gives the surface its watercolor quality: soft celadon green in the open ground, deep indigo in the borders, and rose and salmon flowers that read like faded silk. It measures 7'9" x 11'3", a true room size that sits comfortably in the 8 x 11 Persian rug range, and it ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming it as a hand-knotted Persian weaving. Buyers who care about age over perfection will recognize what this is straight away, and if you want to understand how pieces like this are dated, our guide on how to date an oriental rug walks through the same clues we used here.

Design and Motifs

The layout is the classic curvilinear formula of southeast Persia: a large lobed floral medallion anchored on a small rose rosette at the exact center, radiating outward through 8 broad petal forms filled with palmettes, tulips and serrated leaves. Above and below the medallion sit matching pendants, each crowned by a small vase-like finial, and the 4 corners carry quarter spandrels drawn in the same vocabulary so the field reads as one continuous garden rather than a set of separate panels. Between those anchors the ground is covered with delicate detached flower heads, curling vine tendrils and tiny blossoms scattered at a small scale, which is what tells you the drawing was done by a trained cartoon designer and not improvised at the loom. The border system is generous: a wide indigo main band of flowering stems and rosettes, flanked by pale guard stripes of reciprocal blossoms, plus an inner ivory-green ribbon of trailing vine that frames the field. Note how the border flowers are drawn in full face while the field flowers are drawn in profile, a refinement of the fine Lavar workshop tradition.

A Faded Green Field with Indigo and Rose

Green is a rare field color in antique Persian weaving, and here it has mellowed to a soft celadon that shifts toward straw and pale olive where the pile is lowest and toward a cooler sage where it stands higher. Against that ground the medallion is built from deep indigo and a mid teal blue, outlined in a dusty rose that reappears in every flower head across the field. The wide main border is the darkest note in the rug, a near navy blue that grounds the whole composition and makes the pale interior look lighter than it really is. Look closely and you find secondary colors doing quiet work: ivory in the vine outlines, a muted gold along one guard stripe, brick and terracotta in the corner spandrels, and touches of bottle green in the smaller leaves. The overall effect is soft, silvery and low contrast, the kind of palette that works with grey walls, pale oak floors and antique furniture without competing with anything in the room.

Kerman Weaving and the Lavar Tradition

Kerman sits in the far southeast of Persia and has been a center of fine floral weaving for centuries, with the town of Lavar, to the north of the city, producing the most tightly drawn and most finely knotted work of the group. Lavar pieces are known for exactly what you see here: a Persian knot on a cotton foundation, small enough to carry a fully curvilinear cartoon, single wefting between rows that lets the drawing stay crisp, and soft local wool that clips to a thin, silky pile. Photograph 6 shows the weave with a ruler against it, so you can count the rows yourself and see how closely the knots are packed in the border. That density is why an antique of this age survives a century of use with its pattern still fully legible rather than blurred away. Among Persian Kerman rugs, the green ground examples are the ones collectors chase, and they rarely come to market in this size.