8'2" x 11'10" Persian Kashan Rug | Red Field with Navy Medallion | Signed Weaver's Cartouche

A signed piece in a true room size, this 8'2" x 11'10" rug is the classic central Persian formula executed carefully: a madder red field, a navy lobed medallion with ivory center, and deep indigo spandrels that pull the eye to the corners. The pile is 3/8" wool on a cotton foundation, still full and glossy across the whole surface, and the back photo shows an even, disciplined knot line with no patching or repair. The weaver signed the work in a small cartouche at the top of the main border, which on Persian Kashan rugs usually indicates a named workshop rather than an anonymous village loom. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The drawing is a layered medallion and corner composition rather than a plain open field. At the center sits a stepped navy medallion built in three stages, an outer serrated navy frame, an ivory interior filled with small blossoms and boteh forms, and a pale blue rosette at the very heart. Slender pendants run off the top and bottom points and dissolve into the field. Around all of that the red ground is packed with an all-over vine system: curling split leaves, open palmettes, tulip heads and tiny 8 petal rosettes, each stem drawn separately so no two quadrants read as an exact copy. The 4 corner spandrels carry ivory arabesque scrollwork over navy, a detail visible clearly in the corner close-up. The main border is a navy turtle palmette and vine band, flanked on both sides by ivory and rose guard stripes that step down in width to the selvage, giving the frame real depth.

A Red Field Framed in Indigo and Ivory

The dominant color is a warm madder red, closer to a true cherry than to brick, and it holds the same tone from end to end with only the gentle abrash a natural dye bath produces. Against it the indigo navy of the medallion, spandrels and main border reads almost black in low light and opens into a clear dark blue in daylight. Ivory does the structural work: it outlines the medallion, fills the corner arabesques, and runs as the lighter of the guard stripes so the pattern never turns muddy. Inside the flowers you get the smaller voices, a soft powder blue in the rosettes and leaf tips, an olive to sage green in the stems, a mustard gold in the petal centers, and touches of rust and pale rose. The signature cartouche itself is woven in green, ivory and red, a small bright note in the top border. Wool this glossy shifts with the light, so the red lifts and deepens as you walk past it.

Kashan: The Town and the Weave

Kashan sits in central Persia, north of Isfahan on the edge of the desert, and it has been a weaving center since the Safavid court workshops set the standard for curvilinear design. The town's reputation rests on two things: soft, lustrous local wool that takes dye beautifully and holds a sheen for generations, and a conservative drawing tradition that keeps returning to the same red, navy and ivory medallion layout because it works. That layout is so embedded in how Americans picture a Persian rug that when you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. This example is woven at a consistent knot count with a clean, tight back and straight sides, the kind of workshop-level execution you expect from a piece the weaver was willing to sign, and at 8'2" x 11'10" it covers a full seating group or a 8 chair dining table with the border still showing.