7'9" x 8'1" Persian Isfahan Najafabad Square Rug | Ivory Field with Peach Border | Brand New

A true square is one of the hardest things to find in a good Persian rug, and this 7'9" x 8'1" Isfahan is a clean one: 93" by 97", close enough to square that it sits perfectly under a round dining table or centers a seating group without the room reading lopsided. It has never been on a floor. The pile stands full and even, the ivory ground still carries the slight sheen of unwalked wool, and the cotton fringe is untouched at both ends. Handle it and the wool feels dense and springy rather than dry, which is what you want from a rug that has been stored rolled rather than used. If square is your constraint, this is the section worth browsing: square Persian rugs turn up in a fraction of the numbers that standard rectangles do. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The drawing is classic Isfahan workshop vocabulary compressed into a square. A round central medallion sits on a pale blue disc, ringed by a scalloped peach petal collar and anchored by a gold rosette with an 8 petal blue flower at its core. Out of that medallion runs an all-over field of curved vine, split palmettes, leaf sprays and small 5 petal blossoms, every stem drawn with the rounded, continuous line that separates workshop weaving from village work. Pendant finials extend above and below the medallion, and the 4 corners carry quarter spandrels in the same pale blue so the field reads as one composition rather than a medallion dropped onto a background. The main border is a peach ground carrying alternating large palmettes and clustered blue flowerheads, framed on both sides by an ivory floral guard and by narrow sawtooth stripes in red and blue. The border system is deep for a rug this size, which is part of why the square proportion looks deliberate instead of accidental.

Color

The field is a warm ivory, closer to unbleached cream than to white, and it is the reason the rug photographs so brightly in both the overhead and the low angle shots. Against it the weavers set two distinct blues: a deep indigo for outlines, palmette hearts and the dark rosettes, and a soft sky blue used for the medallion disc, the spandrels and the lighter flower petals. The main border shifts the temperature with a peach ground, a muted salmon that reads pink in raking light and closer to apricot flat on. Gold and ochre supply the punctuation in the medallion core and the border rosettes, while small touches of red appear at flower centers and in the sawtooth guard stripes. Sage and olive green run through the leaves and serrated foliage, with a few rust and brown notes in the palmettes. It is a light, sunny palette rather than a formal red and navy one, which makes the rug easy to place over pale stone, oak or a neutral broadloom.

Origin and Weave

Isfahan sits in central Persia and has been a design capital since the Safavid court workshops of the 16th century, and the reputation of Isfahan rugs rests on drawing: curved line, flowing vine, precision in the small motifs, none of which survives unless the knot count supports it. Najafabad is a weaving town just west of the city that works in the same idiom on the same cartoons, and its rugs are known for sturdy, well-spun wool pile on a cotton foundation, built for use rather than for the display case. That is exactly what this one is. Turn the corner over, as in the photographs, and the back shows tight, regular rows with the design legible knot for knot, the sign of a weaver who kept the tension even across a wide square loom. The pile is a firm medium height, the selvages are tight, and the ends are finished with plain cotton fringe.