8'1" x 11'2" Persian Kashmar Rug | Navy Blue Vase Medallion | Signed Cartouche, Excellent Condition

A signed Kashmar in deep navy, hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation and still in excellent condition, with the pile standing evenly across the whole field. At 8'1" x 11'2" it belongs with our 8x11 Persian rugs, the size that anchors a full seating group without crossing into oversize territory. What separates this one from the usual medallion rug is the field: rather than leaving open ground around the center, the weaver filled the navy with rank after rank of flower vases and footed urns, each drawn in its own small palette, and then signed the work in an ivory cartouche woven into the pile. Every rug leaves us with a certificate of authenticity confirming it as a hand-knotted piece made in Persia.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a stepped ivory and sky blue medallion built around a tall vase pouring into a wide footed bowl, ringed by 8 petal rosettes and small serrated leaves. Above and below it the navy field carries paired urns, bulbous vases banded in terracotta and olive, and slender cypress-shaped leaves that twist through a thin vine, with ivory spandrels at the 4 corners drawn as curving boteh-like leaf forms. The main border is the Kashmar signature at full strength: a terracotta ground crowded with standing vases, blossoms and small perched birds, each vase given a different color so the band reads as a procession rather than a repeat. Inner and outer guard stripes in navy and olive carry a smaller run of urns and rosettes, and a fine reciprocal line separates each band so the borders stack cleanly instead of blurring together. The ivory cartouche sits at the top of the field, its Persian script picked out in dark navy against a pale ground.

A Deep Navy Ground Lit by Terracotta and Ivory

The field is a dark indigo navy that reads almost black in low light and opens up to a clear blue under a lamp, which is exactly what buyers hunting navy blue Persian rugs are usually after. Against it the drawing works in three registers: a bright sky blue that carries the medallion interior and the smaller blossoms, a warm terracotta rust that owns the main border and the outlines of the vases, and an unbleached ivory that draws the spandrels, the cartouche and the scalloped medallion edge. Softer tones fill the gaps, a dusty olive green on leaves and urn bodies, a muted khaki gold on the vase feet, and a brick red used sparingly for accents inside the flowers. The wool has taken these dyes with a gentle abrash across the navy, the slight tonal drift you only get from small hand-dyed batches, and the whole palette is warm enough to sit with wood floors, brown leather and cream walls without fighting them.

Kashmar Weaving in Khorasan

Kashmar lies in Khorasan, in northeast Persia, southwest of the great weaving city of Mashad, and its workshops are sold within the same group as Persian Mashad rugs. The town built its name on exactly this kind of piece: a curvilinear workshop design, drawn on a cartoon and executed in tightly packed wool, with the vase and bird vocabulary that collectors now read as Kashmar at a glance. Khorasan wool is long-stapled and takes a shine as it is walked on, and the back of this rug shows the tidy, even knotting that lets the weaver keep the vase outlines crisp and the script in the cartouche legible, work that only a workshop loom with a named master behind it attempts. If you want the background on how the region weaves and what to look for on the reverse, our Persian Mashad rugs guide covers the drawing, the wool and the signed workshop tradition this Kashmar comes out of.