8'10" x 12'3" Persian Kashan Rug | Deep Red Floral Medallion | 1980s Wool

This is the formula that made Persian Kashan rugs the most recognized floor covering in the world, woven in the 1980's on a cotton foundation with a tightly packed wool pile and kept in excellent condition. The field is a deep, saturated red, the main border is near black navy, and a single ivory and teal lobed medallion anchors the center. At 8'10" x 12'3" it falls into the most usable large format there is, sitting comfortably in the range buyers search as 9x12 Persian rugs, with enough length to carry a full seating group or a 10 seat table. The pile still has its original height and sheen, the fringe is intact and flat, and the selvages are sound. Every rug we ship leaves with a certificate of authenticity recording origin, materials, age and knotting.

Design and Motifs

The drawing follows the classic Kashan layout: a lobed central medallion with 8 and 10 petal rosettes set inside an ivory cartouche, a teal inner disc, and navy pendants reaching out along the long axis toward matching navy spandrels in the 4 corners. Around that, the field is not left empty. It carries a dense allover lattice of palmettes, curled serrated leaves, small rosettes and scrolling vines, drawn with the curved line that separates a city workshop piece from village work. The border system is layered: a wide navy main border of alternating palmettes and flowering vines, an ivory inner band of pink and blue blossoms, a light blue guard stripe with its own vine, and fine reciprocal outer stripes that frame the whole thing. Look at the corner photographs and you can see the pattern resolves cleanly at the turns, which is the detail a weaver has to plan for from the first row.

A Rich Deep Red Field With Navy, Teal and Ivory

The ground color is a rich deep red that reads closer to wine than to orange, and because the wool takes light well it shifts between crimson and dark garnet depending on where you stand. Against it, the florals are drawn in several distinct blues: a deep indigo in the border, a brighter cerulean in the palmettes and the guard stripe, and a soft teal in the medallion center. Ivory and warm cream do the outlining work and keep the dense field legible, while accents of rose pink, mustard gold, chestnut brown and small olive and teal green leaves break up the blue. The result is a warm, formal palette that sits naturally with walnut and mahogany, dark wood paneling, brass, and the navy upholstery shown in the room view. For buyers working the other direction, it is also strong enough to be the only pattern in a room of plain cream walls and linen.

Kashan Weaving in Central Persia

Kashan sits in central Persia, north of Isfahan, and its looms trace back to the Safavid court workshops of the 16th and 17th centuries. The town's reputation rests on two things: soft lustrous local wool that holds dye at full intensity, and the discipline to repeat the red field, navy medallion and ivory spandrel formula at a high enough knot count that the curved drawing never breaks down. When you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. This example is a workshop weave of the 1980's, dense on the back as the folded corner photograph shows, and if you want to understand how weavers and dealers read that evidence our guide on how to date an Oriental rug walks through knotting, wool, dye and wear. Four decades on, the pile is intact and the colors have only mellowed, which is exactly what good Kashan wool is supposed to do.