8'2" x 11'7" Persian Nain Rug | Signed Habibian Workshop | Wool & Silk, Never Used

A signed piece is a workshop piece, and this 8'2" x 11'7" rug carries a woven cartouche at the top of the main border, attributed to the Habibian atelier, the name that sits above every other in the town. It was woven in the 2000s and has never been laid on a floor: the pile stands straight, the ivory ground is clean from selvage to selvage, and the fringes are untrimmed. The drawing is the reason to own it. Fine Persian Nain rugs are judged on how cleanly the vine turns and how small the flower heads can be cut, and here the silk outlines the leaves and petals so the pattern reads in relief when the light moves across it. Every rug we ship leaves Freeport with a certificate of authenticity recording origin, materials and measurements.

Design and Motifs

The field is a true all-over composition rather than a medallion layout dropped onto an empty ground. A small round medallion sits at the center, built from an 8 petal rosette inside a toothed navy star, and the vine system radiates out from it in mirrored quarters so the same palmettes and split leaves repeat at each end. Four sky blue spandrels close the corners, each one filled with burgundy rosettes and curling arabesque that stop cleanly against the inner guard stripe. The main border runs ivory with alternating palmettes and cypress-like floral sprays joined by a thin brown vine, flanked by narrow guard bands of pale blue and rose that keep the border from crowding the field. Look closely at the corner resolutions in the third photograph: the pattern turns the corner without being cut or compressed, which is the quickest test of a properly drawn cartoon.

Ivory, Navy Blue and Burgundy at Close Range

The ground is a warm ivory, closer to unbleached cream than white, and it carries almost the whole rug. Against it the weaver worked at least three separate blues: a deep navy for the outlines and the star medallion, a mid cobalt for the larger palmettes, and a soft sky blue that fills the corner spandrels and the smaller flower heads. Burgundy appears in measured doses, in the corner rosettes, the small blossoms scattered through the field and a fine thread inside the guard stripes, and it is what keeps the blue and ivory scheme from going cool. Soft brown draws the vine tracery and the stems, adding a third tone that reads almost as shadow. Where silk is used in the highlights it sits brighter than the surrounding wool and shifts as you walk past the rug, so the ivory looks pearl from one direction and oatmeal from the other.

Nain, the La System and the Habibian Name

Nain sits in central Persia on the desert edge east of Isfahan, and it came to rug weaving late, in the 1930s, when the town's fine wool cloth trade faded and its weavers turned their precision to knots instead. They kept the Isfahan drawing tradition and cut it into their own palette of ivory, blue and silk. Fineness in Nain is counted by the La system, the number of threads twisted into each warp, and the fewer the threads the finer the weave, which is why Nain 6La and Habibian rugs are the ones collectors chase. Habibian is the workshop that set that standard, and a signed piece from the atelier was never a commercial run: it was cartooned, dyed and supervised as a single commission. On a cotton foundation with a wool and silk pile, at 8'2" x 11'7", this one is large enough to anchor a formal room and fine enough to reward being looked at from a foot away.