8'5" x 12'3" Persian Kashan Rug | Red Floral Medallion | 1980s Excellent Condition

This is a full room-size piece from the 1980s, and the kind of rug that made Persian Kashan rugs the default choice for a formal living or dining room. At 8'5" x 12'3" it covers a large floor completely, with wool pile knotted on a cotton foundation and a pile that still stands upright and full after four decades. The photographs of the folded corner and the reverse show a clean, tightly packed back with no repairs, no thin spots and original selvedges, which is why the condition reads excellent and perfect. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The drawing follows the classic Kashan formula and executes it well. A lobed central medallion sits on a soft pistachio ground and holds an 8 petal rosette at its core, each petal filled with its own miniature flower head in rust, ivory and blue. Navy arabesque cartouches wrap the medallion and send pendants north and south into the field. Around it, the red ground is covered edge to edge with an all-over floral repeat: palmettes, open rosettes, tight buds, feathery serrated leaves and thin curving vine scroll that keeps every motif connected rather than floating. The 4 corners carry sky blue spandrels drawn with the same vocabulary at larger scale, so the field reads as an oval framed by light. The main border is a navy band of alternating palmettes and flowering stems, flanked by ivory and pale blue guard stripes that step the eye down from border to field.

A Deep Red Field With Navy, Sky Blue and Pistachio

The field is a true cochineal-toned red, deep and slightly cool rather than orange, and it holds its saturation right into the corners. Against it the two blues do separate jobs: a near-black navy outlines the medallion, fills the main border and gives the pattern its structure, while a clear sky blue lifts the spandrels, the inner guard stripe and scattered leaves so the design never goes heavy. Ivory appears as the outline color on hundreds of small flower heads, which is what gives the field its lacy sparkle in the detail photos, and as the buttery cream of the narrow guard bands. The pistachio green of the medallion ground is the surprise, a pale garden tone repeated in small leaves across the field, and it is joined by touches of saffron yellow, burnt orange, rust brown and dusty rose. Buyers shopping red and burgundy Persian rugs will find this one warm without being dark.

Kashan, Central Persia, and the Weave Behind It

Kashan sits in central Persia, north of Isfahan, and its weaving goes back to the Safavid court workshops. The town built its reputation on soft, lustrous local wool and on a single confident formula, a red field with a navy lobed medallion and light spandrels, repeated for generations because it works in a real room. When you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor, which tells you how completely this design became shorthand for a serious rug. This example is a workshop weave on a cotton warp and weft, curvilinear throughout, with the knot count needed to draw a vine that curls smoothly instead of stepping. The back photograph shows even rows and a flat, dense handle, and the wool has taken on the light sheen that only comes with age and honest care.