8'2" x 10'4" Oriental Rug | Kashan All-Over Floral Design | Wool and Silk Pile | Brand New

This is a full room size piece, 8'2" x 10'4", hand-knotted in wool with silk highlights on a cotton foundation and drawn in the classic Kashan manner: no central medallion, just an unbroken all-over field of flowering vine held inside 3 border bands. The pile is even, the drawing is tight and symmetrical, and the silk passages in the ivory scrollwork give the surface a quiet shift of light as you walk past it. Handling it, the weight and the close pile tell you it was made to be used rather than looked at. It arrives in perfect condition with no visible wear, and every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity that records the weave, materials and measurements. If you want the wider background on how a hand-knotted Oriental rug differs from the machine-made alternatives, our guide covers it in plain language.

Design and Motifs

The field is an all-over floral design, built from a thin vine that loops across the whole surface and carries lotus palmettes, serrated sage leaves, 8 petal rosettes and small star flowers at every turn. Instead of a medallion the weaver set a small lozenge cartouche at the exact center and balanced it with 4 large ivory rosettes, 2 of them filled with saffron gold, placed at even intervals around it. The big ivory split arabesques repeat at the top, center and bottom of the field and act as the visual anchors that a medallion would normally provide. The main border runs a navy ground with alternating cypress-shaped cartouches and long ivory palmettes, each one outlined in red, and it is framed on both sides by a pale stone guard stripe of running vine with tiny 4 petal flowers. A final narrow band of red darts and rosettes closes the design at the outer edge, and the corners resolve cleanly, which is the first place to look when you judge how carefully a pattern was drawn.

A Deep Red Field Against Indigo and Ivory

The ground is a true tomato red with a slight brick depth to it, warm rather than orange, and it holds the same tone from selvage to selvage. Against it the drawing is worked mainly in ivory and cream, which is what gives the rug its brightness, with a large supporting cast of soft powder blue, sage and dove gray green, muted rose and dusty salmon, and small hits of saffron gold in a handful of the rosettes. The main border drops to a deep indigo navy that reads almost black in low light and makes the red field look richer by contrast, while the stone and ivory guard stripes keep a clear line between the two. Details in the border pick up brick red, clay rose and the same powder blue used in the field, so nothing feels bolted on. The ends finish in natural undyed ivory fringe and the outer edge carries a plain band of the field red. It is a warm, formal palette that sits comfortably with wood floors, cream walls, dark antique furniture or leather.

Weaving Quality and Origin

This rug was made in China, hand-knotted on a cotton warp and weft in a workshop that weaves to the old city drawings, and the Kashan pattern is one of the most demanding of them because there is nowhere to hide a lazy line in a continuous vine. The knot count is close enough to carry the fine curved stems and the small 4 petal flowers in the guard stripes without them blurring, and the wool has been clipped low and level so the silk highlights sit proud of the surface where the light can catch them. Chinese workshop weaving of this grade is honest, well finished work: even selvages, hand-tied fringe, and a back that lies flat straight off the roll, as the close-up with the tape measure shows. At 8'2" x 10'4" it belongs in the 8x10 rug class, the size that covers a seating group with all 4 legs on the rug, and it is brand new, so the pile still has its full height and the buyer gets the whole life of the wool.