8'10" x 13'2" Persian Kashan Rug | Signed Sage Green Medallion | Excellent Condition

Most Kashans arrive on a deep red or ivory ground, which is exactly why this one stops you. The field is a quiet sage green, closer to celadon, and the whole classical drawing sits on top of it in navy, ochre and ivory. It is a signed piece: the cartouche woven into the upper border, visible in the detail photograph, marks the weaver or the workshop that made it, and signed Persian Kashan rugs are the ones worth holding on to. At 8'10" x 13'2" it covers a full seating group or a 10 seat table with room to walk, which puts it squarely among large Persian rugs that anchor a whole room. The pile is 3/8" wool on a cotton foundation, the condition is excellent with even nap edge to edge, and every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a lobed navy medallion built around an 8 petal gold rosette, with a ring of ivory palmettes and curling blue leaves inside the outline, and slender pendants reaching north and south along the long axis. The 4 corner spandrels answer it in the same navy drawing, each filled with a dense curl of split leaf arabesque and ochre blossoms. Between them the field is never empty: fine vine work runs in every direction, carrying small rosettes, buds, feathery serrated leaves and the occasional rust tipped stem, drawn at a scale small enough that the eye keeps discovering new flowers. The border system is generous, with a wide main band of alternating palmettes and rosettes on a lighter ground, flanked by several narrow guard stripes of reciprocal meander and running vine. The whole layout is symmetrical on both axes, which is the hallmark of proper workshop drawing rather than village improvisation.

A Sage Green Field Worked in Navy, Ochre and Ivory

The ground reads as a soft sage green with a cool blue cast, the kind of muted tone that behaves like a neutral in daylight and turns slightly grey under lamps. Against it the navy is deep and unbroken, used for the medallion outline, the spandrel drawing and the heavier stems, giving the composition its structure. The warmth comes from ochre brown and old gold: the rosette at the exact center, the palmettes in the main border, the scrolling leaves that fill the corners. Ivory and cream do the lifting, outlining petals and cartouches so the pattern stays legible, while small touches of rust and brick red appear as flower hearts and stem tips, no more than a few knots at a time. Paler sky blue sits between the navy and the field and keeps the transitions gentle. It is a restrained palette overall, pastel in effect but not washed out, and it suits rooms in oatmeal, grey, olive or pale wood far better than a traditional red Kashan would.

Kashan, the Weaving City of Central Persia

Kashan sits in central Persia, north of Isfahan, and its looms trace back to the Safavid court workshops that produced some of the greatest carpets ever woven. The city's advantages are local: soft, lustrous wool that takes dye beautifully and holds a silky sheen after decades of use, and a workshop tradition that insists on a cartoon, a master drawing and a balanced medallion layout. That is what you see in the back detail here, with straight, disciplined rows of knots and clean color separation, a weave fine enough to render the thin vine work in the field without it blurring. Kashan is also the design most Americans have already seen without naming it: when you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. Finding that same formula in a sage green colorway, signed in the border and in this excellent unworn state, is considerably less common than finding it in red.