8'4" x 11'8" Persian Kashan Rug | Signed Floral Medallion | Red & Navy, Excellent Condition

This is a full room-size Persian Kashan rug at 8'4" x 11'8", hand-knotted in fine wool on a cotton foundation and finished with a woven signature cartouche in the upper border, which tells you it left a named workshop rather than an anonymous loom. The drawing is the classic Kashan formula done properly: a true red field packed edge to edge with curling vine and flower heads, a navy lobed medallion with an ivory core at dead center, ivory spandrels in all 4 corners, and a deep indigo main border held between light blue guard stripes. The pile is even and full with no thin areas, the ends and sides are intact, and the colors have the clarity of a rug that was looked after rather than walked to death. Every piece we sell ships with our certificate of authenticity confirming the origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The center is a pointed navy medallion built in layers: an ivory inner cartouche holding a pale blue rosette with a small red flower at its heart, ringed by navy ground carrying red and blue palmettes, then an outline of ivory and cream vine that reads like piping against the field. Slim pendants rise and fall from the medallion tips, and the same ivory vine reappears in the 4 corner spandrels so the field reads as a single framed garden. Around all of that the red ground is filled with an all-over repeat of 8 petal rosettes, lotus palmettes, serrated leaves and buds on hair-thin scrolling stems, drawn small and drawn consistently, which is the real test of a Kashan cartoon. The main navy border runs a continuous palmette and arabesque vine, flanked by light blue guard bands of rosettes and leaf tips, with narrow cream and red reciprocal stripes at the outermost edge. Image 4 shows the woven cartouche sitting in the ivory band at the top of the rug.

A Deep Red Field With Navy, Light Blue and Olive

The field is a deep tomato red with a slight cherry tone under direct light, the kind of saturated ground that makes this one of the most useful red Persian rugs for a room with dark wood or warm neutral walls. Against it the main border is near black indigo, which gives the whole rug its weight, while two shades of blue carry the detail work: a soft powder blue in the guard stripes and medallion center, and a mid cornflower blue in the flower heads scattered through the field. Ivory and cream do the outlining in the spandrels, the vine tracery and the border rosettes, and a muted olive green runs through the leaves and stems as the quiet third color. Look closely and there are small hits of rose pink, apricot and mustard gold in the petals, maybe 6 or 7 accent tones in total, which is what keeps a field this dense from flattening out. Color transition across the ground is smooth with no abrupt change of lot.

Kashan: Central Persia and the Weave Itself

Kashan sits in central Persia, north of Isfahan, and its weavers inherited the Safavid court workshop tradition along with unusually soft and lustrous local wool. That combination is why a Kashan medallion rug has been the default image of a Persian rug for a century: when you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. The back, shown here under the ruler, is a tight even grid of knots on a cotton warp and weft, worked at the firm, densely beaten gauge Kashan workshops use for pieces this size, with straight selvages and no loose or lazy lines. A signed cartouche on a Kashan of these proportions is not decoration; it is a master weaver putting a name to a commission, and it is the single detail that separates a workshop rug from village production of the same design. At 8'4" x 11'8" it covers a living room or dining room floor properly, and it belongs in the group of large Persian rugs that read as architecture rather than accent.