8'1" x 11'10" Persian Kashan Rug | Signed Floral Medallion | Deep Red Mint Condition

This is the formula that made Persian Kashan rugs the most recognizable floor covering in the world, woven here at 8'1" x 11'10" in a full 3/8" wool pile on a cotton foundation. The weaver signed the work in a small cartouche set into the top border, which is the detail that separates a workshop piece from anonymous market goods: someone put their name on it. The pile is still thick and upright, the ends and sides are intact, and the rug is in perfect, mint condition with no restoration. Every rug we ship, this one included, comes with our certificate of authenticity confirming that it is hand-knotted in Persia.

Design and Motifs

A diamond-shaped navy medallion sits dead center, crowned at top and bottom with a stepped pendant and finished at its heart with an ivory cartouche holding a single 8 petal sky blue rosette. Around it the field is drawn as a continuous all over lattice of curling vine, feathered palmettes, serrated leaves and small cluster blossoms, each flower outlined so it reads clearly against the red rather than dissolving into it. The 4 corners carry matching navy spandrels with ivory flowering sprays inside them, a frame-within-a-frame device that is pure classical Kashan drawing. The main border repeats a palmette and arabesque vine on navy, flanked by a sky blue guard stripe of reciprocal buds and an ivory outer stripe of small rosettes and paired leaf forms, so the eye steps down through 5 bands of pattern before it reaches the field.

The Color Palette: Deep Red, Navy and Sky Blue

The field is a true deep red with a cool cherry undertone rather than a brick or orange cast, and because the wool is lustrous it shifts between a darker wine and a brighter crimson depending on which way the pile is brushed. Against that ground the drawing works in navy blue so dark it reads near black in the border, clean chalky ivory in the medallion center and corner sprays, and a soft sky blue that does most of the lifting in the rosettes and guard stripes. Warm gold picks out flower centers and the thin outlines of the border bands, with olive and beige in the leafwork and small touches of black for definition. If you are shopping the red and burgundy Persian rugs group, this is the balanced version of that palette: saturated enough to anchor a room, broken up enough by ivory and blue that it never goes flat.

Kashan: Central Persia and the Court Workshop Tradition

Kashan sits in central Persia, north of Isfahan on the edge of the desert, and its looms trace straight back to the Safavid court workshops that produced the silk and wool masterpieces now sitting in museums. The town's reputation rests on 3 things: soft lustrous local wool, disciplined curvilinear drawing that keeps a medallion symmetrical across almost 12 feet of length, and a knot density tight enough to hold those small blossoms without blurring. Kashan is also the design most people have already seen without naming it, because when you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. This example is a 2000's workshop weaving, signed, perfectly even in its selvedges and tension, and the kind of classic room-size Kashan that gets bought once and kept for decades.