8'10" x 12'9" Persian Kashan Rug | Wool | Red and Black

A 8'10" x 12'9" carpet knotted in Persia in wool, with a 3/8" pile. At a glance it is a single ivory medallion floating on a rose-red field, the whole of it surrounded by a border so dark it reads as black until the light catches the flowers in it. The rectangular format is long for its width, which suits a dining table or a room laid out along one axis.

Design

The Kashan drawing here is the classic one: a stepped, lobed medallion with an ivory centre panel, a fine lattice over it and a single rosette at the middle, ringed by a near-black cartouche and finished top and bottom with narrow pendant finials. Four corner spandrels in the same dark ground answer it, each filled with ivory-outlined palmettes and curling leaves. Between them the field is not left open: it carries an all-over lattice of thin vines, serrated leaves and small blossoms, drawn small enough that the pattern only resolves when you stand over it. The main border runs a meandering vine with alternating palmettes and rosettes on the dark ground, flanked on both sides by pale grey-blue guard stripes of linked rosettes, and the outermost band returns to the red of the field before the white fringe.

Colour

The field is a rose-toned red, closer to madder than to brick, and it shifts toward raspberry where the pile lies away from the light. Against it the borders and the medallion surround sit in a deep indigo-black that holds the whole composition together. The drawing inside both is done in ivory, a chalky grey-blue, olive and camel brown, with small hits of pale pink and apricot in the flower heads. The grey-blue of the guard stripes is the quiet surprise: it cools the red where the two meet and keeps the dark border from reading as a solid mass.

Making

Hand-knotted in wool on a 3/8" pile, Persian work in the Kashan manner, and in excellent condition, with the pile standing evenly across the field and the fringe intact at both ends. The back, shown against a ruler in the last photograph, is tight and regular, and the fine scale of the field flowers depends on that. One of many hand-knotted rugs we carry in this size.